How Doth the World Perish
by BoxyP
Summary: It's the mid-seventies, and there is a darkness growing over the Wizarding World: the First Wizarding War is about to begin. But behind every conflict, there are complex events and circumstances setting the world on its doomed path,just as there are those that will allow it to survive to see one of the greatest Dark Wizards fall at the hands of a mere babe. These are those stories.
1. Moonight Times -Malmery Dempsey

**A/N:**

Welcome, everyone, to the place that's all about the nitty-gritty of politics, spycraft and war. The one-shots and stories here tie directly into our main Marauder-era AU story, The Path Not Tread, giving background to events mentioned in the main story and often having an indirect impact on the main narrative. As usual, cross-references will be clearly listed, and the update schedule will completely depend on various factors, of which two are the main ones:  
1) posting and writing schedule of PNT;  
2) time and availability of me and my writing partner, SilenceoftheSolitude, who is the absolute genius behind this side of the narrative.  
Authorship will be clearly indicated in the notes of each chapter, so that credit goes where it's due, and as this is also where our main joint writing project is located, expect texts containing up to 50/50 split in writing between the two of us.

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**Moonight Times**  
16\. October 1976

**Muggle World**  
The Expert's View

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Interviewing a Muggle world expert on current affairs, weekly  
Written by Eric Jones

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_**This week's specialist, Malmery Dempsey, works for the Office of Misinformation, within the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes at the Ministry of Magic. The Office works closely with the Muggle Prime Minister's office to explain all the magical accidents whose nature is too spectacular to be easily hidden from Muggles. Following the recent disappearances of Muggles throughout the British Isles, believed to be connected to the activity of a group of anti-Muggle wizards and witches headed by the man who calls himself Lord Voldemort, the Office of Misinformation has had to work double time to liaise with the Muggle authorities.**_

_**Mr Dempsey, we have arranged this interview, first and foremost, because our readership has inquired after the type of work you undertake. In particular, questions have been raised as to how you can reconcile upholding the secret of the existence of magic to Muggles with the need to liaise with some of them in order to cover up major magical accidents. **_

Well, the first thing that must be said about the Office of Misinformation is that we must keep abreast of current Muggle developments. As I'm sure everyone knows, we are tasked with finding plausible explanations to happenings that are quite unexplainable without magic; think of a giant being sighted and – why not – recorded on camera by a Muggle over the hills of Scotland. While giants are only acceptable in a society that recognises the existence of magical creatures, it is not beyond the scope of Muggle fantasy to envision such creatures themselves. What our Office does, then, is find a plausible excuse for unlikely events by capitalising on Muggles' vast imagination; in the case of a giant, for instance, we could simply say that it was an expedient for the filming of a motion-picture (which is much like a magical picture, only it goes on much longer and usually sustains a narrative, as well as producing sounds).

It is because of this role that every member of our Office is highly knowledgeable about Muggle culture and technology. We need to evaluate the scope and range of an accident first (though it is here worth noting that the process of selection is made at a lower level by the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, which then decides whether to send cases to us or to the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee), and then we have specialised teams that are tasked with dealing with different accidents (some are in charge of dealing with illnesses like Dragonpox, others with magical accidents with repercussions on weather, and so on). This requires special knowledge that is not easily acquirable unless we dedicate ourselves quite thoroughly to Muggle sciences and find within them acceptable explanations.

Once our teams have formulated the necessary excuses, we expound on them in a formal presentation to the office of the Muggle Prime Minister. Because the man is quite busy with matters pertaining the ruling of Muggle Britain, it would be impossible to have him read on every one of our explanations to approve it or fix it accordingly; indeed, even if he had, the knowledge required to approve our justifications is well outside any one person's scope. Because the Prime Minister is, with the Monarch, the only Muggle person without magical connections allowed to know of the existence of magic at any given point, the office within the Muggle ministry in charge of analysing our work and liaising with us is comprised of Squibs. Their unique nature makes them absolutely invaluable to the smooth running of our work.

_**Squibs are considered rejects within our society; it is not only not unheard of, but actually quite common for magical families to reject Squibs altogether and disown them. Accidents of suspicious disappearances have been raised on more than one occasion, to be sure. **_

The status of Squibs within our society is certainly deplorable. The idea that they should be cast off from their families and left to fend for themselves in the world without any kind of support is lamentable. Magic is not the solution to all the problems of this world; whilst magic does help in many endeavours, Muggle science has brought Muggles all the way to the Moon, and has allowed them to achieve endeavours that no magical human would ever dream of without the use of magic – flying, of course, comes to mind quite quickly, but let's not forget simpler things like lighting a fire. Squibs, with their knowledge of magic and the need to reinvent themselves and adapt to a new environment, could be a great source of help for the innovation and betterment of our world. In this, not only are they not to be shunned, but they should be held in much higher regard.

_**Mr Dempsey, in recent talks at the Ministry, a proposal has been set forth to cut funds to your Office, in an attempt to better regulate the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Despite very reasonable demands advanced by the DMLE, you have been a staunch opposer to this proposal; could you tell us why? **_

Talks have been brought forth by the DMLE about the need to better equip our Ministry with the tools to fight the unlawful actions of a select group of individuals set on disrupting the smooth running of the Ministry and the British Wizarding world more thoroughly. The points made were very valid, and I do not dispute the need to fight this rising aversion to the current system. Indeed, I find it quite necessary and urgent myself. What I did oppose at the time the proposals were brought forth, and what I still oppose today, is the idea that my Office should be considered any less useful in the current political situation. My Office, which deals mostly in protecting the Statute of Secrecy, is the one most involved in entertaining Wizarding-Muggle relations and, as such, is a cornerstone to the sensibilisation of the Wizarding public to the Muggle world. By removing funds to our Office, not only would the Ministry impeach those relations, but it would also send a message of silent agreement to those same lawless individuals who have been attacking its validity as a proper institutional agency.

_**In your preliminary response to the Wizengamot, on the date the proposal was first advanced to the court, you also highlighted how recent unlawful activity has necessitated your working overtime to come up with viable excuses for the increasingly violent acts that have occurred in our territory. **_

Yes, indeed I have. Starting roughly six years ago, an increasing number of disappearing Muggles has been noted by the Muggle government and perplexed it greatly. While kidnappings and the odd killing have occurred in the Muggle world without ransom notes ever sent or bodies ever discovered, the incidence of such accidents increased to the point where the Muggle government felt it necessary to consult us on the topic. Aurors were sent to investigate many of those disappearances, and while some indeed proved to be unrelated to our world, there have been at least a dozen proven connections to magical activities – not to mention the countless scenes where evidence, though inconclusive, certainly pointed towards that way. It has been the duty of the Office of Misinformation to investigate those cases and find explanations that could appease the Muggle general public. These duties have piled up over our ordinary workload, and have put a lot of stress on our staff, who have been required to work well outside their contracted hours. To remove further funding from our Office would imply that we would be made to fire some of our employees and thus further exert the ones who would remain. It is either that, or risk the breach of the Statute of Secrecy.

_**A counter-argument which was very resonant with the Wizarding public was that the Ministry should give priority to the protection of magical individuals rather than Muggles, and that it is the duty of the Muggle government to protect its own. What is your personal stand on the matter? **_

While I do not dispute this sentiment, I should remind the public that the reason why the Statute of Secrecy – which is our Office's duty to defend and uphold – is in place is to protect our society as much as the Muggle one. This is not mere propaganda, because if it were, the Statute would not have been approved by the International Confederation of Wizards as early as 1692, and would not currently still be upheld by all the countries which adhere to the ICW, which are all the world's countries. Indeed, the Statute of Secrecy is one of the few legislative acts that has been successfully supported nearly unanimously by the ICW. While some countries, for their specific cultures, require the Statute less than Britain, it is nonetheless true that magic has been made to flourish thanks to this implementation and that by protecting it we are, in fact, protecting our society.

Furthermore, what the public here fails to address is the fact that the protection of Muggles needs to concern us when it is wizarding criminals that bring forth their demise. We have not – nor has any other country involved with the facts – taken part in the Muggle World Wars, indeed we have opposed such actions for exactly the purpose of protecting the Statute of Secrecy, so then it naturally follows that we should now be at our best in the attempts at protecting Muggles against rogue elements of our world.

_**You will hopefully indulge me this question, Mr Dempsey, though it does not deal with your immediate interests, but I do believe it quite pertinent with the current topic. You have, and rightly so, mentioned an incidence of suspicious disappearances in the Muggle world; it is especially true that these occurrences have had their peak the last November, leading to the ousting of former Minister for Magic, Eugenia Jenkins. How would you say has that affected yourself, your work and the Ministry? **_

I must firstly caution anyone for taking my word on this to be reflective of my Office's views on the subject. The accidents that have been grouped under the 'November disappearances' had a very strong impact on our society, a sure sign of what I have thus far underlined – while the SoS effectively separates us from the Muggles, our destinies cannot be so distinctly separated. It is paramount that we remember we share a country with Muggles, and that we are brothers in the end. They, just like us, are very much humans, and as such they must be treated. To allow that rogue elements of our society attack Muggles so deliberately and with impunity was a blemish to our society's name.

The change in leadership within our government, then, has not surprised me in the least, for it showed us that the majority of our society is against allowing such behaviours. I cannot truly speak of what Minister Minchum's arrival in the position of Minister for Magic has done to the whole of the Ministry, for that is not within my scope of competences, but I can certainly say that the Minister's concern with the protection of our society has been remarked. One thing is for certain, Minister Minchum does not see with a favourable eye the presence of outlaws that strive to gain strength and power within our society, and it is clear that he will be fighting against this bloated opponent who fashions himself as our true protector while destroying all that we stand for with his actions.

_**Your recount of your Office's activities seems to imply that you are, as of late, stretching far beyond your capabilities and your sphere of competence. Would it not be more prudent to leave investigative work to the Aurors within the DMLE and, possibly, the Obliviators? Is not a collaboration preferred to the stretching of your resources and the venturing outside of your realm of competences? **_

You do raise a valid point. Personally, and I know I can speak for a fair amount of my colleagues as well, I can tell you that we would be delighted to have the Aurors take up the investigative work that has fallen into our hands. Indeed, one such proposition was made to the DMLE at a far earlier stage in the investigative process. The request, unfortunately, was met with a sound refusal. I do not wish to cast blame on the Auror Office here, for I can assure the public of their utmost cooperation and their attempts at improving our efficiency; unfortunately, their acceptance was dependant on more funds being directed their way to increase their productivity, a productivity which, at this stage, does not allow them to come to our aid. Those funds, of course, would have to come from somewhere, but because priorities for the Auror Office are other than the ones we ourselves require, to give them the funds requested from the source suggested – us – would indeed worsen our situation.

Now let me spare a word for the Obliviators. I have not grouped them with the Aurors for a very specific reason. While it is true that their job is often necessary, and needs to be appreciated, in this instance, erasing Muggles' memories would serve no actual purpose. We are not trying to hide the sighting of a unicorn by some small children, something that might have happened as an accident, but whose reoccurrence we can easily prevent; we are here talking about mass disappearances of people with families, friends, acquaintances, and written records to their names. There is no number of Obliviators that can efficiently deal with all of that, and even less so when the disappearances have been occurring for six years and are not ensured to stop, though they do appear to have abated somewhat. We should focus our efforts on prevention, rather than damage containment.

_**You have mentioned an increase in unlawful activity, and it seems that what you are saying connects this new trend to a risk for the Wizarding society as a whole. Would that be a fair assessment of your stand, or are there other conclusions to be drawn from your words? **_

No, you are quite right in your assessment. I, as well as the majority of the Wizarding public, have been following with ever-increasing interest recent political developments. The subtle, yet perseverant attack on the Ministry and its institutions that goes hand-in-hand with a perpetual attack on the Muggle world and its sympathizers within the magical environment, is nought but the attack of a megalomaniac whose only interest rests within himself. This Lord Voldemort character, who hides himself and his followers behind names designed to instill fear in all of his opposers, does not wish to better our society, his only desire is to rule us with fear and violence. And just to let you all know that we should not be made to fear or hate the Muggle world, let me address to you old words of a Muggle man: "Nothing good ever comes of violence".

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**A/N:** The article is in full the work of SilenceoftheSolitude, and fits into PNT ChIII,37: Of Trades and Deals (sections are quoted in the main story from it).


	2. Evening Prophet - edition 1 Nov 1976

**Evening Prophet  
**edition of the **1st November 1976**

**BLACK-GREEN SKY OVER BRITAIN**  
**MINISTRY ACCUSED OF NOT PROTECTING ITS CHILDREN**

Aurors responded to many calls for help this morning, 1st of November, in the magical area of Dublin. Complaints of strange noises reported by neighbours in the early hours of the day, and attributed to holiday celebrations, were later discovered to be the sound of torture being imposed on a wizarding household. The final alert for the authorities came in the form of a floating skull with a snake coming out of its mouth **(see picture)**. Previously claimed to have been a mark of a radical political group, the sign has now been unerringly linked to the figure of the mysterious man calling himself Lord Voldemort **(more information on Lord Voldemort follows on page 4)**. The scene of the crime was discovered by Ailill and Tara Dempsey, the son and daughter-in-law of the victim, as they returned home at around six in the morning, after a night of partying. Finding the ominous mark above his father's house, Ailill rushed inside to find his son, 7-year-old Eimhin, standing motionless above the tortured corpse of his grandfather. **(follows on page 2)**

[page 2]  
Ailill Dempsey immediately rushed to call the Aurors and remove his son from the scene. In a state that initially gave the Aurors the idea of petrification **(see page 9 for information on Petrification)**, the boy was believed to have been possessed and committed the crime, until the parents consented to the use of more radical methods of interrogation **(thinking of using Veritaserum on a suspicious individual? Better check the regulations on its usage on page 10)**. Eventually, a mind specialist was employed, and with the use of a Pensieve **(everything you didn't know on the Mind Arts can be found on page 7)** the DMLE **(keen on joining the right side of the law? head to page 5)** was able to reconstruct the events that had taken place in the Dempsey household.

At the stroke of midnight, Malmery Dempsey, age 69, Vice Head of the Office of Misinformation **(for more information on the Office of Misinformation, go to page 8)**, of a wizarding family, was woken up from his bed by a group of Death Eaters **(for more on Death Eaters, see page 4)**. Led forcibly to the living room, he found his grandson, whom he was minding for the night, waiting for him downstairs standing much like a statue beside a cloaked figure. His Death Eaters having positioned themselves in a circle around the three figures, Lord Voldemort (who was indeed the man shrouded beneath the cloak) took to torturing Mr Malmery Dempsey for hours while his followers watched on.

Details on the torture itself have not been released, but images of the body being carried away suggest a great degree of suffering was inflicted upon the victim. Witnesses who were interviewed, but preferred to remain anonymous, confirmed that the Aurors were called on site repeatedly due to strange noises and lights having appeared in the house, but did not arrive until the events had already unfolded, leading some to suggest that the authorities are incompetent and unable to cater to the needs of the people, and others to imply that the Auror corps fear Lord Voldemort and his followers.

The Ministry, of course, denies any such claims **(for the full interviews with the Head of the Aurors and the Minister for Magic, see next page)**, but the fact remains that Malmery Dempsey was a person of interest. While his work in the Office of Misinformation did not make him an exceptionally obvious target for the once-political, anti-Muggle group, in a feature interview which had appeared on the _Moonight Times_, Mr Dempsey had openly attacked the ideals and actions of Lord Voldemort and his followers.

The son of the late Mr Dempsey and his family have denied us an interview and have kept their son, Eimhin, well hidden from the public eye. The Auror investigation will proceed in the following days, especially in the matter of identifying the people responsible for the murder (Lord Voldemort's identity remains to this day unknown, and his followers all wear masks that make them unrecognisable), and bringing them to justice. The targeted attack on an esteemed member of wizarding society seems to suggest that the Death Eaters are no longer going to limit their targets to the Muggle world, but have now fully proclaimed their willingness to attack those who stand in their way.

\- Lex Alter

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**A/N:** This chapter is in full the work of SilenceoftheSolitude, and fits into PNT Fifth Interlude: The Scottish Lioness, as well as Chapter III,39: Of Duels and Battles.


	3. Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors P1

**A/N:** So, we, BoxyP and SilenceoftheSolitude, welcome you to our first truly collaborative endeavor - a ~40k novella set in the AU world of Harry Potter as imagined in the story The Path Not Tread (though really, this one fits perfectly well into the canon verse as well). This story in five parts tells the events discussed by James, Sirius and Peter in Chapter III,38 (Of Secrets and Silences) of PNT, namely Voldemort's attempted (and foiled) coup against the Wizengamot, which, together with the Moonight Times editorial from Chapter 1 of this collection, is the catalyst for the gruesome terrorist statement by Voldemort and his Death Eaters discussed in the Fifth Interlude, depicted in the first scene of Chapter III,39 of PNT (Of Duels and Battles), and reported in the Evening Prophet issue from Chapter 2 of this collection. This story was in _huge_ part Silence's brainchild. While BoxyP was the one who kick-started the whole idea by deciding she needed something provocative for Voldy to do in the main PNT story and thought up the coup itself, Silence took one look at her feeble first draft and said 'nope, we can do _much_ better than that'. Then she did some sorting through her mental library of historical knowledge (good thing she's a historian by training, there!), shuffled them about in her head, sat down, drew a few diagrams and presented the whole thing to BoxyP for writing into the PNT storyline. And then BoxyP called back and said 'hey, this is such a great idea, and you put so much work into it already... wanna write the actual thing with me? It'd be a shame to leave it just as an outline when it's this detailed, and in any case, I've always wanted to do a writing collaboration'. Thus _Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors (and Issues)_ was born. The novella is an even split in the writing department between the two of us, with one person being the primary scene writer, and the other doing the editing, until the whole thing had a proper flow of a coherent whole: let's see if you pick up who wrote which scenes. And so, without further ado, we bid you welcome, and we hope you enjoy the ride.

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**Summary:**  
Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors (and Issues) tells the story of the first truly agressive chess moves in the biggest chess game that Wizarding Britain has ever seen, between the two most dangerous chess masters of their times: Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. But between the notorious Death Eaters and the mysterious Order of the Phoenix, it's a game where even the peons have their own goals and angles, where even the colours of the pieces aren't quite as clear-cut as black and white, and where the ultimate outcome might prove even out of the chess masters' grasp.

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**Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors**  
**(and Issues)**

**Part 1**  
**Seek the Opportunity**

**Augustus Rookwood** was a bright man. He had been born smart, and had become smarter as he had grown. As a young child, he had lived a relatively tranquil life; his father had been a low-grade Ministry worker, and his mother had done some shopkeeping work in Diagon Alley. They had lived in a magical village in the Midlands, unassuming and sheltered from the Muggle world. Augustus was the youngest of three children; his two older sisters had always cherished him and cuddled him, having already been seven and ten respectively when Augustus had been born. Augustus had never been too assertive with his friends; he had liked to play and he had liked to participate, but he would have rather stayed out of a game than be part of any friction. He had, overall, always been very likeable, and his best quality had always been that he was a good listener. A very good listener.

He was plain, average looking, and in his adolescence he had developed a pockmarked face and the tendency to not stand properly, stooping so as to make himself invisible. He had been good in his studies, but he had never wanted to excel, because for all of his intellect, the more he had grown, the more Augustus had realised that all he truly wished for was power. Power, to Augustus, didn't mean strength or success, it didn't mean becoming Minister for Magic or Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot; power meant knowledge, for knowledge was the most powerful tool to control people. And so Augustus accumulated all of his knowledge and stored it, until he could use it to his benefit.

He had first heard of the political movement called 'The Knights of Walpurgis' at the age of sixteen, in 1949, in a conversation between two Slytherin boys that had been walking in the corridors in front of him, but hadn't noticed his presence (it would have been more accurate to say that Augustus had been following them because the stockier one was captain of the Quidditch team, and he had hoped they were going to discuss tactics to employ in the Slytherin-Ravenclaw match that was taking place the following week, but Augustus didn't usually think of himself as a spy; he liked to think of himself as a hallboy of sorts, a porter at best, who fetched and carried information around, until everyone did as he wanted them to do because he had told them precisely what they needed to hear to convince themselves that their actions were their own). He had explored the movement not because he was much of a political man, but because the two boys had discussed the matter in hushed tones, which meant that it was an important topic, something he'd be able to use in future.

That, Augustus knew, had been the most fortuitous piece of knowledge he had ever acquired. An intense investigation behind the doctrine and structure of the party, and Augustus had realised that he had found his leader. He had little preference for blood status and ideologies, his only desire in life being the safety afforded to him by the power of the information he wielded at all times, but he had liked the sound of Lord Voldemort. There had been nothing Augustus had been able to find on him. He had learnt the name of all of his associates, he had learnt their political leanings, their aims. Absolutely everything. But not a word had ever been spoken about Lord Voldemort's identity, only the reverence afforded to him by men, young and old, who held so much power in their own hands and still revered him as a deity. And so, Augustus had decided to make himself useful. He was a nobody, but he _knew_ everybody. That was his ticket to power.

He had aced his N.E.W.T.s, not through particular effort on his part, but because he had studied religiously and copied easily during the written parts, compensating for a lack of innate talent in the practical sections. His overall score had not been tremendous enough to catch anyone's attention, but it was promising enough that when he had made his Head of House write a character reference for him, it had afforded him the necessary credit to get pretty much whichever job he might have wanted. After all, Augustus had never once been caught out of bounds, or in the process of breaking a rule in seven years at Hogwarts. It wasn't so much that he had been perfect, or even that there hadn't been someone who had tried to place him into trouble out of spite or simple dislike, but Augustus was always five steps ahead of everyone, and that meant that whenever someone had tried to frame him, they had ended up with points lost and a detention for their troubles, while Augustus had been on the other side of the Castle studying.

He had known since the beginning which job he had wanted, and had suited his academic career to fit that purpose, until he had, at the age of twenty-five, been awarded with his longed-for post at the Department of Mysteries. He was an Unspeakable. Instead of celebrating like any other man in his position would do, with a glass of Firewhiskey and a couple of friends who would only know that he had gotten a promotion, Augustus had gone out in search of a man named Antonin Dolohov.

Over the course of his first seven years at the Ministry, Augustus had done his best to build an extensive web of contacts and information, giving and giving, until everyone trusted him in spite of the fact that nobody knew him; he had traced the members of the old 'Knights', who had since disbanded their legal affiliation to create the illegal movement called 'Death Eaters', and learnt as much as possible about all of them. It hadn't been difficult, really, with names such as Avery, Nott and the likes. But out of all these powerful men, the one he had trusted the most to be the right one to approach had been Dolohov. Out of all of them, Dolohov had been the one whose ideology Augustus had truly trusted, and though he didn't share in it in the least, Augustus had known that he ought to approach the man who was most surely linked to Lord Voldemort in a bond of complete submission and admiration.

Dolohov had followed Grindelwald's ideology, there were traces of him to be found as a young boy that implied that, but upon Grindelwald's defeat at the hands of Dumbledore and subsequent incarceration, he had disappeared for a while, until he had re-appeared in Great Britain, a proper political man in a country that was not even his own. Augustus had trusted him very much to have Lord Voldemort's best interests at heart, and therefore Augustus' own.

He had tailed the man shoddily, until Dolohov had cornered him in a back alley, the eyes of a man who had been more than ready to claim a victim, but before he could have done as much, Augustus had spoken up. "I would like to make myself useful to your Master." Dolohov had put him to the test over the course of the following month, until he had been confident enough that Augustus would not have betrayed Lord Voldemort.

Augustus would always remember their first meeting - his new Master's aura of power and control washing over Augustus in a frightening yet exhilarating manner. He had learnt advanced Occlumency as part of his process of becoming an Unspeakable, but he had laid all of his barriers down when Lord Voldemort had penetrated his mind with the most powerful Legilimency assault Augustus had ever experienced. He had felt filled, even as the mind rape took place, and he had agonised for more even as his brain desperately tried to fight the pain. It had been everything Augustus had hoped for, and then more.

In the intervening years, Augustus had learnt what it actually meant to be a Death Eater. There was a plan, a very long-term plan, for which the Dark Lord had been making arrangements, and every man and woman in his service was slotted into the plan like a jigsaw puzzle; none of them were instrumental, of course, because most of their presences within the ranks of the Death Eaters hadn't been planned, but once they joined, they were made to feel indispensable. Augustus himself, though very aware of his condition, couldn't help but think that his position was one of the most profitable to his Master. And the feeling had a chance to grow whenever he was summoned, the Mark decorating his left forearm stinging slightly. The Dark Lord had never called him in urgency, because Augustus couldn't be seen behaving erratically by his few colleagues, but also because the Dark Lord was never rushed. Augustus admired his Master's composure greatly, and his ability to anticipate and compensate even more; the Dark Lord was possibly the only person Augustus had ever come across whom he considered a better strategist than himself.

That wasn't to say he couldn't or didn't become angry, of course, for when failure was presented to him, there was no end to the pain one could suffer because of it, but it made sense to Augustus; there was only one sure way of keeping his followers in line, and that was to make sure they didn't think failure could be easily discounted (there was no talk about dissention and resignation from the ranks, of course, because death would be a kinder end to one who tried either).

When Augustus was summoned, that late May morning in 1976, he had no impulse to run off, abandoning his post, not even when he realised that he was alone in the room and would go by unnoticed if he were to leave. He had a fruitful day of work behind him when he left the Ministry that afternoon to attend before his Master, and not an ounce of apprehension about being late. Indeed, to anyone looking, Augustus appeared to be heading home as he did every other day of the week, with no pressing concerns on his mind. Except for the fact that when he Apparated, he did it by unobtrusively touching the skin of his left forearm.

He wasn't aware of the exact coordinates at which he reappeared, but he noticed that he was in an abandoned house. He didn't need to explore it to know which room he had to walk in to find his Master, a slightly ajar door beckoning him in as surely as any other signage could have done. He took the time to conjure his mask and transfigure his robes to a darker shade before going in, just in case others were present that shouldn't be aware of his identity. Augustus himself belonged to a small pocket of Death Eaters amongst many; he knew some of the identities of members who didn't belong to his own pocket, but beyond that, identities remained concealed. Indeed, the mere number of followers was unknown to him. And so it should be to safeguard the entire organisation.

When he finally entered his intended destination, he found the room to be small and dark, with no windows and only the door Augustus had used to come in as a connection to the rest of the house. A lone figure was standing, the imperious posture unmistakeable to anyone who had seen it at least once in their life, let alone for someone who had been in the Dark Lord's presence as often as Augustus had. Augustus didn't wait for him to turn around before kneeling.

There were no words spoken for a time, Augustus keeping as still as possible as the Dark Lord remained in silent contemplation of whichever darkness lay before his mind's eye. "Augustus, good. You're here."

Augustus didn't answer, nor did he move. His eyes, downcast as they were, studiously remained fixed upon the hem of the Dark Lord's robe, reading his Master's movements from the way it did or didn't undulate.

"Things are in place," the Dark Lord revealed placidly. "What matters remain unsettled are small and inconsequential, and well on their way to being resolved. This, my dear Augustus, means that the time has come for my ascension."

Augustus felt a thrill of excitement rush through him, not at being referred to as 'dear', but because of the prospects of being witness - and, more than that, being an active participant - to what promised to be one of the greatest marks left on Wizarding history. Augustus saw the robe move against the stone floor, until he spied the tip of a foot right in front of his eyes.

"On the 22nd of September, the Wizengamot must be mine. You will ensure that those who oppose me are removed and replaced by my hand-picked men. See to it that a plan takes shape, and bring it to me tomorrow. Should it be satisfactory, you will take point on it; a reward for your decade and a half of faithful service to Lord Voldemort. And I need not remind you that no one unauthorised by me is to know of this."

Augustus' mind began to formulate a plan even as his Master spoke. "Very well, My Lord. I shall be ready by tomorrow."

"I thought you might say that." Augustus recognised his Master's tone to be one of pleasant satisfaction and rejoiced in the idea of having produced it. The Dark Lord began walking, and when he passed by Augustus, he brushed him with his robe. "See that it is a good plan, Augustus. We do not want the Minister becoming agitated; we are very much concerned about his health."

"Of course, My Lord." There was as much of an enthusiastic glee in Augustus' voice as there was in the Dark Lord's.

* * *

**There was** no rush to Augustus' step, no added urgency, only the mere wish to go about his business as usual. Spying was not a job for hot-blooded individuals; one had to be constantly restrained, always calm and collected. Augustus was never out of place, no one ever even asked him why he was in a specific place. He was where he ought to be at all times, and if he should trespass upon restricted boundaries, it would be at someone's invitation and in plain sight; lurking was the business of amateurs, and Augustus absolutely refused to be an amateur.

He had not expected the Dark Lord's summon to revolve around such an important issue, but he wasn't surprised. He had received precise instructions, and his only duty was to carry them out; there wasn't going to be any question about the significance of the date (it was self-evident to anyone who had ever met the Dark Lord that he acted with the utmost regard for symbolism, and Augustus had learnt all there was to know about traditions of old in order to always be three times more prepared on such occasions. In short, he knew precisely that the 22nd of September signified the advent of darkness), or the reason why he had been tasked with this particular plan on his own. No, Augustus was not in the business of asking questions; he answered them, and complied with orders when given. Anything more than that was a signifier of incompetence.

The plan had been formulated in his mind in a very short time (along with four others that he would keep as back-ups because it was always necessary to be prepared for the worst), and with it, ten different solutions to any contingency that might arise, because whatever plan he had constructed hinged on people's actions and behaviours, and people were wholly unreliable. Augustus trusted no one, not even himself, to always complete a plan, and that meant that he could not take for granted the success of any mission, even the simplest one. When the objective was the covert restructuring of the Wizengamot, Augustus rather thought it better to be over-prepared than cavalier.

The Dark Lord had approved his plan, and Augustus had already been able to give him the names of people he thought necessary to inform, but beyond the immediate person who would be chiefly responsible for committing the murder of the intended victims of the attack, Augustus had had to wait for confirmation on the others. The plan, as it were, was an effort in patience and structured sabotage, but something only Augustus and Lord Voldemort were going to be privy to in its totality. Morsels would be fed, slowly and designedly, to the few people who would need to know, with the necessary advance notice - whether that be long, to ensure there were no blunders, or quite short, to prevent any leak of information. Augustus' first step was to contact his main figurehead, the puppet who would be ultimately responsible for committing the murder of seven Members of the Wizengamot, for that was the actual endgame. There were no alternative options available; people needed to die for the Wizengamot to be under the control of his Master, and Augustus had no trouble manufacturing their deaths. After all, what was the death of seven select witches and wizards, in comparison to the great resurrection of the Wizarding World? Purification was a process that was born of fire, and fire burned and consumed, leaving destruction in its wake.

Augustus knew precisely who to use as his instrument; having kept a watchful eye upon every department within the Ministry, he knew which individual would see the plan, think it necessary and enact it. What this person would never learn or, indeed, should not be made aware of, was Augustus' identity or the true instigator of the crime. Not only could Augustus not be linked back to multiple assassinations, but the Dark Lord's persona should absolutely not be linked back to the action. It would be too risky for the individuals who had to become new Members of the Wizengamot if the Dark Lord were to lay claim to the deaths.

And so Augustus, having identified the assassin in Aloysius Yap, a member of the Auror corps, had only to ensure that the plan was suggested to him by an individual whom Yap trusted unequivocally. It needn't be one of his closest men, but certainly an Auror whose record was spotless. Augustus had just the person in mind. Such a person would necessarily have to come from Yap's team, and Augustus had a woman quite susceptible to external influence - Lorelei Bullard.

His first step was to cause a reason for Yap's dissatisfaction with Ministerial policy on dealing with Muggles. The matter wasn't difficult to achieve at all, since Muggles, Muggle-borns and matters of similar nature were discussed daily within the Wizengamot. It was a simple matter of ensuring that the silent supporters of Lord Voldemort, for once, didn't cast their vote to block a ruling in favour of Muggles or Muggle-borns. Nothing of great consequence, of course, for Lord Voldemort had no desire to lose political traction, but enough to create a wave of discontent within the more radical members even of the Auror corps, the ones who longed for the old world order to be restored. The prioritisation given to the protection of Muggles from wizarding attacks was precisely such an occurrence.

The idea Augustus put forward to his Master was that there existed a veritable grey area of the law, wherein if a wizard or a witch committed a crime against a Muggle, simple Obliviation would not necessarily be enough, for while it was a good solution in cases where Muggles accidentally witnessed magic, Muggles could not obtain compensation for something done against their person or their property if they had no chance to remember what that something was. Furthermore, it would be impossible to sue a wizard or a witch in a Muggle court, for more people who weren't entitled to such privilege would be made aware of the existence of magic. Augustus' idea, astute an observer as ever there was, was that the 'perfect' compromise would be to have someone who was aware of magic, but not predisposed towards it, be the judge in such cases. And that someone fell neatly in the category of Squibs. The same Squibs who were despised and loathed by any respectable old-minded magical person.

Augustus only had to foster the hubbub of displeasure until the belief that "something should be done to curtail such measures from being enforced" came out of Yap's own mouth at the end of his shift, in an Auror haunt of Diagon Alley. Augustus, who was slowly imbibing a non-alcoholic drink at the pub, his back to Yap and his fellow comrades whose opinion mirrored his, allowed himself the luxury of an internal smile. However, his satisfaction was complete only when the man put forward the unborn thought of actually harming Members of the Wizengamot. It was a sketch, a veiled reference to an action that spelled a sentence in Azkaban if the wrong people were to hear it in a more developed stage, but it was precisely what Augustus had wanted to hear.

In the following days, Augustus took care to inflame Yap's dissatisfaction with the Ministry's ruling body and to keep the flame of assassination alive, until it was safe to use one of the Dark Lord's lowest grade supporters to kindly suggest that the easiest way to attack the Wizengamot would be to be assigned to its protection, for "a lot of accidents could happen if the personal guard of the Wizengamot failed in its duty." By mid-May, Yap and three of his most trusted men were assigned in that precise post. Augustus felt safer, though never completely assured, in the knowledge that his plan was slowly yet surely advancing.

In the beginning of June, as per his request, the Dark Lord tasked one of his men to Imperio an unassuming wizard and set him to kill his wife. The plan had truly begun.

* * *

**Aloysius Yap** had been a member of the Auror corps for nigh on thirty years. He was a steady individual, with clear ideals and a very strong sense of duty. When he had joined the Aurors, he had been trained in the art of safeguarding the magical community, to ensure the rights of wizardkind were shielded against the assaults of the barbaric Muggle society. He liked his duty and had always given his best to fulfil it. As the years wore on, however, an increasingly pro-Muggle government had started to rise, making the implementation of what he perceived to be his duties an increasingly complicated business. In short, a rift had been created between the laws he had to abide by, and what Yap believed to be the moral legislation he ought to implement.

He wasn't a revolutionary, for he didn't much believe that the entire community had a right to take up arms against the status quo, as that was the duty of law enforcers and it should not change - the alternative being anarchy. What he did believe in, however, was action. There was talk, murmurs of discontent - there always were and always would be. And then there was the actual belief in change and the need to implement it through any means necessary. If death was the result of such means, then death should be more than just an anticipated result; it had to be the _hoped_ for outcome.

Through years of experience and exemplary work, Yap had earned the position of Senior Auror, which meant that he was the team leader of a small group of Aurors. The Auror corps had, all things considered, a rather straightforward organisation - quite unlike anything else within the Ministry. At the foot of the ladder, there were Trainees, who spent around three and a half years under the supervision of proper Aurors as part of the Auror Training programme, studying everything from the arts of subtlety and infiltration, to the workings of criminal minds. Trainees were then put to the test for a six-months trial period on the field before becoming Junior Aurors. That position was held for a varying amount of time - depending on a person's skills and attitude for the job. Junior Aurors belonged to larger teams, and usually moved around different teams to see where their talents best shined.

The next step on the ladder was that of full-fledged Auror. An Auror was, nominally, part of a larger team, but usually acted independently and was trusted to complete investigative missions individually, though it often happened that Aurors would participate in joint duties. At the head of any team - however cohesive that might be - were Senior Aurors. One could retire without ever having achieved this position and still be incredibly good at their job. The place of Senior Auror usually required a bit of political savviness or, at the very least, an amount of patience for politics and paperwork. On the plus side, Senior Aurors were not squashed into the communal offices, but enjoyed their own office space, as well as much more freedom when it came to choosing their missions and duties. Senior Aurors also had the privilege of delegating those duties they disliked to any member of the team they headed.

The last step of the ladder was occupied by the Head Auror, who only reported to the Head of the DMLE. Lobelia Moody had occupied that position for a number of years, and it was difficult to imagine the Auror corps without her at the helm; even if one didn't necessarily like her on a personal level, she was competent and incredibly astute.

Yap's own investigative team comprised five members aside from him, three of which had been with him nearly since the very beginning of his career. They were there with him at the end of the day when the Wizengamot passed a new legislation which would ensure that a wizard or a witch committing a crime against a Muggle should be made to be accountable in a mixed-court, led by Squibs, of all people.

"It's absurd," Hurst Butts commented. He had a deep voice and the physique to go with it. He wasn't overly short, but he was so stocky that he appeared to be barely taller than a child - he was built more like a Graphorn than a man. Indeed, what little was left of Butts' hair reminded Yap very much of small horns. His ire was as inflamed as the glass of Firewhiskey he drank in a single gulp after his statement. Butts was stalwart and trustworthy to the end, but not the brightest flame in the chimney. He was exceptional with defensive spells and a devil with binding ones. His moral fibre, moreover, was unquestionable. "Next thing you know, they'll have us at the mercy of the Muggle legislation even to go to the loo."

Yap turned to Sheridan Conner, who had been unusually quiet. Her features were highlighted in the darkened room. Conner's pointy nose stood out, certainly, but so did her clear blue eyes. Her prominent cheekbones cast shadows over her mouth, making it difficult for Yap to fully analyse her expression. Usually, the woman was quick to offer her opinion, for she was always well-informed and could read any given situation. Indeed, Yap had expected her to give an opinion before the vote had actually been cast and the legislation decided upon. But the woman was quietly observing the drink in front of her with an air of quiescent contemplation which Yap didn't want to disturb.

"I don't know about that," Ernest Stern declared with an air of finitude. Where Butts resembled a Graphorn, Stern had the legs of a Diricawl and the body of a hippocampus. He was built of sinew and lean muscles, and nothing else beside. Only his glass-rimmed eyes betrayed that beyond the finely-trained body there was an intellect sharper than most. Their colour, a natural hazel, would turn towards greener shades when Stern was working with his mind, and a duller brown when he was exerting physically. "What I know is that I think this is a load of shi-"

Conner's fist made a resounding impact on the table in front of her, effectively interrupting Stern's swearing. The bespectacled man appeared taken aback, for none of them had ever gotten angry at the tiniest bit of swearing. His fine eyebrows shot to the line of his hair, and the hand holding his drink trembled enough that the liquid spilled all over him. His first concern was to the state of his well-tailored robes.

"Something's not right," Conner commented, in a low voice. Yap had to strain his ears to listen to her words properly.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't expect the outcome of the vote to be this way," she announced. Wrong predictions were not generally a news, but they were absolutely unheard of coming from Conner. Not only was her instinct top-notch, but she was one of the most skilled arithmancers Yap had ever encountered - certainly a talent outside the academic world. If she had expected the vote to be different, then there was a factor which they had no knowledge of, a variable she had been unable to account for. "This vote means something deeper than we understand."

"Well," Yap concluded, still deeply dissatisfied with the results - even though Conner's observation had not passed him unnoticed. "Whatever the reason, one thing remains true, and that is that something should be done to curtail such measures from being enforced."

"I'll drink to that," Conner announced, even as Butts took the second Firewhiskey he had ordered and downed it in a single gulp as well.

Stern, who wasn't as quick as Butts to agree to Yap's every word, but rather enjoyed over-analysing any given situation, inquired after more details. "What would you propose in such cases? There's little power we have as a political faction, after all."

"Creating a political party is the last thing we need," Conner rebuked before Yap could say a word. Conner and Stern had graduated together, two Ravenclaws of first class intelligence who had put their intellect in the service of law enforcement, much to Yap's gratefulness. Indeed, where he always favoured Butts, the Gryffindor heroic character, in a fight, he relied on his two Eagles much more than he did on the Lion, overall.

"I agree completely," Stern said. "After all, should the Aurors gain political leverage, we would turn into what the Muggles call a military state, where law enforcers dictate the law they want to enforce, and while that is not necessarily bad, it might lead to tyrannical tendencies.

"On the other hand," the man continued, "if we had the possibility to make our voice heard in regards to state policy, when our own expertise on the subject matter would contribute to the realisation of a sensible decision, it would be beneficial to the entire wizarding society."

"Ah," Conner said with a provocative smirk. "I was wondering when the idealist strategist was going to surface."

Yap could read the sexual undercurrent between the two and saw Butts shift uncomfortably in his chair. It wasn't an actual secret that the two colleagues enjoyed each other's company outside of working hours, and since they weren't hurting anyone, Yap had never had the inclination to put a stop to it, but it did sometimes become cause for uncomfortable silences. Butts wasn't very good at silences, however, and had Yap not been so unfailingly loyal to his men - as he had been encouraged to be throughout his Hogwarts schooling as a Hufflepuff - he might have asked the two casual partners to find another outlet for their sexual forays or flip a coin to decide who was going to leave. Instead, he decided to cover the tension with his own idea.

"I do believe the Wizengamot should be held accountable. Anything that threatens the security of our world should be considered an act of treason." No one objected to the declaration, even though they were all aware of what treason entailed.

The repercussions of the legislation were felt throughout the department, and they put a strain on the workload of the entire force. More and more Aurors, not wanting to send their fellow wizarding kin into the hands of Squibs or Muggles, tried their hardest to pass minor crimes of mixed-jurisdiction as fully wizarding crimes, creating a mountain of paperwork as a result. Evidence that wasn't there was often manufactured and planted, with the full acceptance of the criminals, but the constant control of less traditional Aurors made it difficult to always succeed. Formal complaints were lodged with the Head of the DMLE, and a petition signed to be brought in front of the Wizengamot.

Seeing there were enough signatures on it to pass it to the chamber without need for his adding his own, Yap refrained from putting quill to parchment and cautioned his three closest men to do the same. Even when he publicly grumbled, he did so with mentions of grey areas, longer processing time for cases, and things that could not, under any circumstances, be construed as dissatisfaction against the ruling government.

When even those two recourses failed to bring back the old judicial system, Yap's frustrations rose to the point of patent discontent, and a small provocation by Lorelei Bullard, one of the two remaining members of his team, who easily declared that the Wizengamot was comprised of a bunch of idiots who should try a day working as an Auror before they even contemplated passing ludicrous laws, made Yap's resolution to find a solution even stronger than what it had originally been.

"Sometimes I wish I was one of those idiots who stand outside the Wizengamot chambers when they're in session; I'd fall asleep and see what came of it. After all," the woman declared, "a lot of accidents could happen if the personal guard of the Wizengamot failed in its duty."

"Careful what you say, Bullard," Stern cautioned her. "You might end up in Azkaban just because you're frustrated."

"And land us there with you for not reporting you," Butts added menacingly.

The woman sighed frustratedly, "I'm sorry, I'm just tired and grumpy. You're right, of course."

But Yap had listened, and he had heard. And the plan which he had been putting together took proper shape thanks to the woman's words. It took him a week to make sure Bullard's services were requested by another unit, a few more days for him to get rid of Nelda Jernigan, the other member of his team, and a week and a half after that, he had himself and his three trusted friends relocated to the duty of protecting the Wizengamot members. It was only when the three of them had expressed their frustration and had been doing the job for a week that Yap told them that he had been the driving force behind the change.

The three of them fell into a silence at the end of which, Yap knew, his career would be decided. "So Bullard struck a chord, hey?" Butts commented eventually, conveying his absolute faith in his boss.

"I suppose this'll prove whether or not you actually need a political party to affect change within the political arena," Stern declared. "How much are we betting, Conner?"

"Our careers, possibly," the woman said, before taking Stern's arm in a decidedly un-covert manner and leading him towards the nearest fireplace.

Yap released the breath he hadn't known he had been holding. He'd trust his three men to the end of his life.

* * *

**The chime** of the fireplace in the master study of Grimmauld Place had Orion Black looking up from his desk with a frown. While Grimmauld Place was, naturally, connected to the Floo Network, the main connection went through the parlour fireplace, under the purview of Walburga and the house-elves. Any house guest who wished to visit or speak with the residents of the house could only pass through that particular fireplace.

Orion's personal fireplace, on the other hand, was part of its own little network, designed and connected to a select number of other fireplaces spread across Britain by one of Orion's contacts at the Department of Magical Transportation, with the express purpose of being invisible to the Floo Network Authority. This wasn't an uncommon measure, per se, though it was one that the Floo Network Authority consistently attempted to crack down on, because it gave people a way of communication that was outside the purview of the Ministry and thus couldn't be monitored. This was one of the favoured methods used by various individuals and organisations who were, depending on whom one asked, either intent on hiding their illicit activities from the wizarding law enforcement, or fighting against the Ministry's attempt to establish a secret surveillance state of Wizarding Britain.

In Orion's case, it was a matter of savviness, rather than anything so pedestrian as political extremism – the power he had gained over the years stemmed from intelligent political influence and economic investments, and secrecy was the prime tool in his arsenal for both of those things. He trusted that his study was warded enough so as to be impregnable to anyone attempting to spy on his activities inside, and the only secure way of communication, in his opinion, was communication in person, where he could read the other individual and judge their words and intentions by all the little signs almost none ever managed to hide in their body language, facial expressions and tonal inflections. Not to mention that any form of written communication could be intercepted and be utterly damning if found by the wrong people.

Not many had access to Orion's personal Floo network, and he usually had a clear idea of when he might receive a visit from one of his contacts. The chime of the fireplace now, therefore, was slightly alarming, as it was rather unexpected – his contacts knew not to use it frivolously, when there were so many less conspicuous methods of passing information.

That meant this was urgent, and likely rather serious.

Waving his wand at the fireplace, Orion straightened in his chair. The man who stepped out of the green flames was on the far side of thirty, middling in height and build, with an unremarkable face and colouring that didn't catch the eye. That, Orion knew, was rather the whole point – people tended to forget Lucas Tannen the minute he was out of their sight.

"Mr Tannen."

"Mr Black," Tannen greeted with an incline of his head. "May I sit?"

"You have information of use?"

"Rather a bit more than that, actually."

Tannen, calm on the surface, was nonetheless not fully in control of himself; there was a shakiness to his countenance that was unusual for the normally rock-solid man that lent credence to his words. Nodding, Orion summoned the bottle of Firewhiskey from the liquor cabinet in the corner and poured the man a glass, which Tannen accepted with a grateful flash in his grey eyes, taking a somewhat larger swallow than would have been strictly appropriate for a social occasion.

"I am listening."

"The Dark Lord intends to take over the Wizengamot from within."

Caught in surprise, Orion found himself actually staring at the younger man, who took another sip of the liquor and then stared at it almost forlornly for a moment, before rallying to meet Orion's eye.

"And how does he intend to do this?" Orion questioned, his mind already racing to what he knew of the Wizengamot, what he'd heard of Voldemort's activities in and out of the political arena, and what he assumed to be that wizard's ultimate goal, beyond what he was selling to the public as his group's politics.

Tannen explained.

In all, it took some two hours until Orion was satisfied that all the information Tannen had on this matter was now in his possession. There were plenty of holes in the narrative, of course; Voldemort was masterful in controlling the flow of information in his organisation when he chose to be, and this matter appeared to be one of very serious importance indeed for the Dark wizard. But what Tannen had managed to ferret out had not been insubstantial, and it certainly laid enough groundwork that Orion could do something about it.

When his spy among the Death Eaters finally left, Orion found himself staring at the fire crackling merrily in the fireplace, turning the new information over in his head, looking at it from every angle, searching for the best way of implementing what he'd learned. One thing was certain from the onset, though – Lord Voldemort could not be allowed to hijack their government from within.

Lord Voldemort had emerged on the political scene seemingly fully-formed by the time he'd caught most everyone's attention, with his proclamation of highly conservative politics and fight for their society's very identity. He kept away from the public, but in those circles Orion frequented – circles of old-money, primarily-Slytherin elite, of malcontent witches and wizards sick of kowtowing to the Muggle government and sick of hiding behind the Statute of Secrecy equally – he took no time at all charming everyone into starry eyes and crazed minds. Even Orion's own wife Walburga had been taken in by him, never mind someone as fanatical as Bellatrix, who'd married into the Lestrange family for the sole reason of prostrating herself at Lord Voldemort's feet (and if some wagging tongues were to be believed, underneath him in his bed).

Orion could barely hold the sneer off his face at the very thought of the man. _The Dark Lord._ The level of hubris and pretentiousness that this man had, to style himself thus, as if he was the first or the last of his kind, as if there was never or would never be one greater than he. To style himself a lord of anything when their kind had proudly put away all Muggle titles when they'd accepted the International Statute of Secrecy, their allegiance to the Royal House of Stuart be damned. To act as if he was the purest of the pure, to name Salazar Slytherin himself as his own direct ancestor, when he insisted that he had no name but the one he'd given himself, and then have no one ask why this was in the first place...

No, Orion had no respect whatsoever for this upstart who thought he could storm in and change the way their world worked, for his own personal gain. But Melania Macmillan and Sirius Black II had raised no fool, either, not when they'd already had one to contend with in Arcturus, their husband and son respectively. Orion had met Lord Voldemort three times since taking control of the Black family affairs, had looked into the man's eyes, had heard the man speak. And that meant Orion knew perfectly well just how dangerous a man Lord Voldemort was – one with the skill, forethought and resources to accomplish what he set his mind to, and the viciousness to tear all those who opposed him to pieces. Crossing him was not something the House of Black could afford. It was luck, in this case, that Walburga's knickers were twisted over him and that her hot temper let everyone know her thoughts on the matter, because it meant that Orion could remain distant and noncommittal without arousing suspicion, so long as Voldemort's actions did not directly threaten the interests of the House of Black.

This particular set of actions on Voldemort's part, though, most certainly did.

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black could trace its ancestry to the Roman Empire; it was the oldest extant magical family on the British Isles, and as such, it was the closest thing to royalty that existed in Wizarding Britain. And like all families, it had had its ups and downs, its share of scandals and public embarrassments over the centuries. But the modern standing of the family had been single-handedly achieved by Orion's grandfather, Sirius Black II, who had trebled the family fortunes with his shrewd business sense, and had known his own son well enough to not leave the control of said family fortunes in his incompetent hands. He'd groomed Orion since infancy, and had ensured that his grandson guided himself by one simple rule – _Toujours Pur _– purity in blood, yes, but also purity in motivations, purity in personal dealings, purity in business. Purity in all things. And that meant _nothing_ came before family interests, politics included.

Voldemort couldn't be allowed to take over the Wizengamot, because this would put the interests of the House of Black under his purview. But equally, Voldemort couldn't suspect Orion Black of being involved with bringing down his highly intricate scheme, because making an enemy of that man would be an exorbitantly high price for the family's independence.

So really, when seen in this context, the situation truly only had one good solution.

Leaning back in his chair, Orion swivelled around to face the portrait on the side wall.

"Great-grandfather, I have need of your particular services."

* * *

**A/N:** The title of Part 1 comes from the quote by the master of worldbuilding and the father of the modern fantasy genre,  
J.R.R. Tolkien:

"The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who **seek the opportunity**."


	4. Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors P2

**Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors**  
**(and Issues)**

**Part 2**  
**Adjusts the Sails**

**"He insists** on meeting in person," the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black, former Headmaster of Hogwarts and Orion Black's great-grandfather, had said once he'd returned from delivering Orion's message to its intended recipient.

"Of course he does," Orion had replied, suppressing a sigh of contempt and exasperation. "Does he have some convenient out-of-the-way Muggle establishment he prefers to frequent, perhaps?"

"I imagine he knows plenty of such places, the Mudblood lover that he is," Phineas Nigellus had replied with distaste. "But no, he's decided he wants the conversation to be in his office. He instructed me to inform you to expect a Portkey within the next thirty minutes. Delivered straight to your writing desk, the presumptuous cad said! Oh, sometimes I would box his ears for that insolence of his, see if I wouldn't! Even if he is my successor.."

Said delivery ended up being by way of a phoenix bursting into existence in front of him with a flash of brilliant orange-yellow flame , which was how Orion found himself seated in front of the ornate, grandiose desk of Albus Dumbledore, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and the current Headmaster of Hogwarts. The old man was seated comfortably at his desk, letting the silence around them stretch as he studied Orion. Orion returned that dubious favour without hurry; if the old wizard wanted to play one of his games, he was welcome to it. Orion had been inured to these sorts of things decades ago.

"Well, then," Dumbledore said at last, almost as if waking out of a reverie. "Tea, perhaps? Or some sherbet lemons?"

"Tea would be perfectly acceptable, thank you."

Summoning the tea took a bit more time, so that by the time Orion had his cup and saucer in his hands, it was almost fifteen minutes since his arrival. In ordinary circumstances, he would have been fuming over the lost time – the Black patriarch detested inefficiency – but these were anything but ordinary circumstances, and with an opponent of Dumbledore's calibre, patience was one of his greatest weapons.

"So, then," the old man said finally, "tell me, Orion, why was it that you felt I would be best positioned to put your highly valuable information to proper use, of all your contacts?"

"Tell _me_, Dumbledore," Orion replied, "how would you define Lord Voldemort?"

Dumbledore lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise. "I would have thought the whole of Wizarding Britain to be familiar with my stances on that particular individual."

"Certainly; it does not answer my question, however."

The old wizard leaned back in his chair a bit, dropping the façade of an affable old man. "I would define him as highly intelligent, power-hungry, and lacking any empathy whatsoever. In short, someone with the abilities that could allow him to rule the world, and the complete lack of any restraints, moral or emotional, that might curtail his ambitions to do so. I imagine you see much the same. I must admit, I have wondered what has until now prevented you from putting that knowledge to beneficial use for your own enterprises, Orion?"

"Riddle is not a wizarding surname."

_This_ got Dumbledore's attention. Orion lifted an eyebrow coolly at the surprise on the old man's face.

"You might be forgiven for losing track of dates; after all, it was quite some decades ago."

The realisation blooming to life on Dumbledore's face was quite entertaining to behold. "Ah; you remember him from school."

"That I do, yes, when his name was Tom Riddle and he lived in a Muggle orphanage. I imagine you're quite as aware of the things one can learn, when one knows the right information to seek," Orion answered.

"Then I assume you saw through him even then?"

Orion scoffed. "Of course I did. I will not deny that I had luck in being three years behind him in school, but I understood perfectly well what sort of person he was as soon as I realised he had been the one to open the Chamber of Secrets in '43, with all the attendant... excitement, shall we call it, of that year. And it certainly wasn't late Armando Dippet with the idea to keep Rubeus Hagrid here at Hogwarts out of the goodness of his heart, when the half-giant's pet had been said to have killed a student, was it, Dumbledore?"

"Shall we say that we understand one another, then, and move on to current business?"

Took him long enough, Orion wanted to say, but held it in. Instead, he put down the rather bland tea onto the old wizard's desk and straightened in his seat.

"I have been apprised of several movements within Lord Voldemort's organisation that, put together, conjure a rather troubling image. The first was a report made by one of Voldemort's followers whose brother is having liaisons with a rather influential liberal member of the Wizengamot; the Death Eater's brother had been convinced to influence his paramour on the cases the Wizengamot heard. The second was a report of another Death Eater, who had, some months later and on Voldemort's instruction, performed the Imperius Curse on a Pure-blood of insignificant family standing, instructing him to murder his wife in their bed. The third concerned the architectural plans of the Whitehall Street underground."

Dumbledore drummed his fingers five times on his desk before responding.

"Ever testing," he murmured, to which Orion gave him an unimpressed look.

"You are supposedly the most powerful wizard of our times, Dumbledore; if I must be less circumspect than this, I shall begin to wonder if you're simply very practiced in spells to induce mass delusion."

To Orion's consternation, far from scoring a hit, his words only served to amuse the old wizard, for that twinkling look returned to his eyes along with a slightly mischievous smile.

"Ah; very well then, I do enjoy a good puzzle. I have two questions."

"Naturally."

"Which cases did the Wizengamot hear, on the encouragement of this Death Eater's brother?"

"The cases heard were at the end of April and beginning of May, concerning crimes against Muggles."

"And the name of the man Imperiused to kill his wife?"

"Deacon Lister."

Dumbledore's face darkened, and he nodded, understanding blooming on his face.

"This is grave news, indeed, Orion. I thank you for bringing it to my attention."

For all that Orion couldn't stand the man, he also couldn't deny that the old man's greatness was justly earned. Lucas Tannen had certainly had more to say than simply _those_ three particular tidbits, though they ultimately were the true keys to the whole narrative of Voldemort's scheme.

With a supercilious nod, Orion Black stood up and took a moment to straighten his robes before meeting the blue eyes of the most powerful wizard of their times.

"Words are only ever tools, Dumbledore; it is to deeds that I look for in a man's character. You can thank me by preventing Voldemort's attempt to hijack our government. I imagine I don't need to emphasise that I want absolutely no credit for assisting with this matter?"

"My silence on your involvement with this is the least repayment I can make."

"Good. Oh, and Dumbledore," Orion added as he picked up the Portkey from where he'd left it on the old man's desk, "the next time information of this nature comes my way, our interests may not align; if they do not, do not expect to hear from me."

"Of course, Mr Black," Dumbledore replied with an amused smile. "Good evening to you."

"And to you, as well, though I imagine it will not be."

"No, I don't imagine that either."

The last sight of the Headmaster of Hogwarts that Orion got, before he activated the Portkey to take him home, was of almost ancient understanding and razor-sharp intellect already devising ways of preventing the impending catastrophe that the Black patriarch had so very neatly plopped into the old man's lap.

* * *

**Yap didn't ask** too many questions as a general rule, but he did take opportunities when they presented themselves to him. He met Lorelei Bullard in the pub; she looked exhausted after a long day's work. Her robes were rather disheveled, and her long hair, usually held in a tight, unobtrusive bun, was mostly cascading wildly to her shoulders, making her appear even worse for wear.

"We caught this nutter," she said. "Did in his wife, gets sentenced to Azkaban - no Kiss on account that he didn't use an Unforgivable and didn't plan it, according to his barrister. Anyway… end of the trial he just up and shouts to all and sundry that he's gonna take revenge on the maggots who put him in Azkaban, kill every single one of them."

"They'll be glad he has not been sentenced to the Kiss, now," Yap commented in spite of himself.

"We had to constrain him because he tried to lunge for one of our wands, and someone called for an immediate retrial. But the motion wasn't carried through. The chap is over ninety, and I don't fancy his chances of lasting more than two years in Azkaban, let alone getting out and carrying his threats through."

"He tried to attack members of the Wizengamot?" Yap asked, trying to sound alarmed, rather than interested.

"It must have been his intention, but there was no way he was going to overpower any of us," Bullard tried to downplay the attempt.

"Nevertheless," Yap said, "why wasn't I informed? My detail works on ensuring the protection of the Wizengamot, we should be alerted to any threat to their safety."

"Well," Bullard shrugged. "I told you now, didn't I?"

Yap was hard-pressed not to punch the woman; every time he met with her, he was gladder to be rid of her. He took a sip of his beer to prevent himself from losing his temper and saying something which might put his career in jeopardy. This was the first positive idea he'd had about actually doing something against the Wizengamot. He could use this, if only he was careful enough.

Madoc Priddy, one of the Aurors he had managed to oust from the protection detail of the Wizengamot while adding another few of his own, had been an expert in Portkeys, and had been arguing with one of his other colleagues about the usefulness of Portkeys in the defence of the Wizengamot. Priddy had argued that since the magic existed, they should make it so the Wizengamot should be, at all times, in the position of defending themselves by simply using a Portkey which was tuned to escape the various anti-teleportation barriers that existed within the Ministry of Magic. His commitment to the idea and his conviction of its usefulness had brought him to actually make a written proposition to the Head of the Aurors and the Head of the DMLE. While Yap had thought the action rather out of character for the placid man - if the adjective could ever be used to describe anyone who undertook the role of an Auror - Priddy had carried his campaign forth. Its lack of success had not surprised anyone, since the proposal had come at a time when there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the Wizengamot was the safest ruling body of Britain - wizarding or otherwise. Indeed, not even Priddy had found his failure surprising; he hadn't even found it upsetting, really. If Yap had to describe Priddy's reaction to receiving the letter of denial for his proposal back, it would be 'confounded'.

The beauty of the idea, in Yap's opinion, was that it was brilliant and yet oh so vulnerable. He had dealt with too many reports of malfunctioning Portkeys not to know as much. And this ridiculous threat, from a man who'd probably ingested something that had made him become a lunatic, was the perfect reason for him to suggest the implementation of such a protective measure. It was brilliant, and it was unbelievably lucky.

Yap checked his pocket watch to see that it was already past ten; there was little chance of gathering anyone to work on the idea presently. "Tomorrow morning, before the Ministry officially opens, I want you and all the other members of the prisoner transport team who were present today at the trial to give me a full report of what happened." He took a last sip from his beer before getting up, much to Bullard's dismay. "Hopefully I won't need to write to your superior to request your presence."

Yap heard the woman sigh and curse herself for her big mouth even as he retreated to the streets.

He made three quick Floo calls as soon as he was home, ensuring that Stern, Butts and Conner would all be there in the morning to attend the interviews with Bullard and her team. He instructed them to come in at five, a measure that would ensure that they would be alone and could speak in the relative privacy of his office of his plans and how they were developing. He had managed to change most of the Auror-detail on the Wizengamot, bringing in wizened and disenchanted Aurors whom he could trust not to ask too many questions or turn their backs if he ordered them to, but as of yet he trusted no one quite as much as his three original subordinates, and wanted to count uniquely on them when the time for action came. He would make sure the others didn't object to sudden changes in schedule, but he would only ask Butts to actually attack someone, only Stern and Conner to fudge with the Portkeys.

His officialisation of the investigation made it possible for him to bring forward a motion to increase security measures on the Wizengamot members by installation of a Portkey on their persons at all times. When the measure was eventually agreed upon, it was decided that, in order to make the measure fully effective, such decision would have to be concealed from everyone except the few members of the Auror security detail who needed to know of it (other than the members of the Wizengamot themselves) and that the Portkeys in question needed to be inconspicuous - the decision was taken to make the 'W' on the members' robes a word-activated Portkey.

The morning following the decision, Bullard showed up in his office, carrying with her a parchment on which she had compiled a list of Members of the Wizengamot who had been present on the day of the threat. Adding to that, in a wondrous - for her - bout of efficiency, she had also added a list of MWs whose life had been threatened more than once for decisions taken during their time on the Wizengamot.

Yap was surprised by her entire behaviour; little grumbling, paired with an extra amount of work was not to be expected by Bullard; the woman had never been a bad Auror exactly, but her patience for due process and paperwork was lower than it should have been by all means. And throughout their encounter, it seemed to Yap as though an entirely different person was there with them, a third individual who was actually efficiently presenting all the evidence they needed in lieu of Bullard herself. But all Yap could swear to seeing was a shadow, and shadows didn't have the power to hold evidence, especially not in Bullard's voice. In the end, he dismissed the thought completely since he felt slightly confused about the list anyway.

It wasn't very long, but the names suggested something more to him, and yet he wasn't entirely sure what exactly that was, until he read them a second time when Bullard had left:

_Conall Slora  
Arcturus Black  
Elphias Doge  
Gopal Chaudry  
Hassan Zaidi  
Griselda Marchbanks  
Tiberius Ogden_

Yap, unable to shake the feeling that something important had just fallen into his hands, immediately summoned Stern to his office, hoping his thoroughness in mind-numbing research would be a sufficiently expedient tool of investigation for Yap to cast his mind onto other matters quickly. As soon as his subordinate arrived, he set the man to analysing those seven individuals, to see whether or not they were generally working against the best interests of the Wizengamot in as much as Yap's own views were concerned.

He entrusted Conner and Butts to make sure no one in their squad disturbed him and Stern in the meantime, and a quick look in the registers of the most recent votes undertaken by the Wizengamot assured him that five of those seven names were actually good targets. Of the last two, Gopal Chaudry, an MW who had shown a bit too much liking towards the Lord Voldemort character (who was trying to get to the right order of things in the wrong way, by undermining the Ministry excessively, which would weaken it to the point of leading to anarchy). was not entirely bad. However, Arcturus Black was quite an ill choice. As a member of the most ancient pure-blooded family of Wizarding Britain, it was no surprise that Arcturus Black was quite in line with Yap's own beliefs, and Yap was as confused as Stern had been as to the reason why Arcturus Black, of all people, had appeared on a list with many liberal members of the Wizengamot. Nevertheless, Yap easily categorised it as being a consequence of the Black family being too powerful for their own good and bringing about the envy and enmity of even those families that proclaimed themselves as their closest friends.

Stern, who was much quicker than him at this kind of research, as well as more thorough, also set himself to devising a list of all the members of the Wizengamot who had consistently voted unreasonably since their appointment and those who vacillated with the political wind. Clearly, nothing could be truly done about the hereditary seats (for they would most likely remain in the hands of like-minded individuals), about Albus Dumbledore (the old wizard was not to be trifled with), or about Barty Crouch (after all, the man was the Head of the DMLE and his demise would not be favourable under any circumstance), but in the end there were twelve members of the Wizengamot on Stern's list which, in Yap's opinion, could be disposed of.

* * *

**Joining the Order** of the Phoenix had almost been an accident for Edgar Bones. He'd not gone out of his way in search of a secret resistance, nor had he ever felt the sort of awe towards Albus Dumbledore that would have inspired him to keep track of what the old man was doing. As it was, it would have perhaps made more sense for him to have been content with his position as an Auror, convinced of the righteousness of his cause and the government he was serving, and not even only because he was a civil servant – like the rest of his family, Edgar was a Hufflepuff through and through, loyal to his core.

Edgar, however, had found his way into the Dracones Dormientes Society at the age of fourteen, brought in by his older brother Alfred, the oldest of the three siblings, whose self-imposed role as a protector always clashed so horribly with his adventurous, flighty spirit. And once he'd found his way into the Society, Edgar had, without knowing so, also found his way into Dumbledore's purview.

The Society of the Sleeping Dragons had, perhaps, once been a couple of students' joke of a secret club, centuries back. By the time Edgar had come to Hogwarts, it had become an urban myth, like the Chamber of Secrets and the bloody histories of Hogwarts' silent and taciturn ghosts. The Muggle-born students who heard of it added their own flair, too, with stories of the Illuminati and the Freemasons, making it largely sound as outlandish as it was inauthentic.

Well, the inauthenticity was only so easily conclusive because the members of the Dracones Dormientes Society made sure not to leave a trace of themselves exposed to outsiders. In its purest form, the Society was a secret network of highly intellectual individuals whose goals to aid and improve Wizarding Britain wove themselves firmly with their beliefs that this could only be achieved by working with others, not by seizing power for their own. The main goal of the Society at the time of Edgar's joining in 1960 had been to serve in bringing together people with similar interests and helping them transition into the adult world at the tender age of seventeen.

It was only well after Edgar had finished his schooling, with the appearance and rise on the political scene of the individual who styled himself as Lord Voldemort, that Hogwarts' very own secret society began changing its focus from allowing intellectuals a place to build connections into providing a platform to discuss far more active forms of changing Wizarding Britain in direct response to what was perceived as the largest threat to their little corner of the world since the wizard Gellert Grindelwald and the Muggle Adolf Hitler.

Edgar had kept his connections after completing his Hogwarts education, though he'd wholeheartedly embraced Auror Training and later the Auror Office. For the next decade at least, during his early career as a Trainee and then Junior Auror, his focus narrowed down, first to the cases in front of him and the things he still needed to learn from his mentors, and then in the late sixties to his marriage and the family he was building with Melania Abbott. It was only in the early seventies, when he finally achieved the promotion to the position of Auror and the independence that came with it, that the awareness of everything playing out just several floors away in the meeting rooms of the Wizengamot, as well as on the streets, began very seriously intruding into his life and thoughts.

The rise of hate crimes that followed any of Lord Voldemort's more overt actions, the disappearances that were plaguing the Muggle world as much as the Wizarding one, the quiet dispersal of the most radically liberal newsprints, the lines of worry and fear on the faces of his old Society friends, all of it suddenly made him incapable of sitting on the side-lines, incapable of letting it pass him by. And yet his position limited him as much as it gave him freedom, especially when politics influenced his Department, when Wizengamot members began dictating what the Aurors should be doing, whether by limiting their funding or putting pressure on individual investigations to be taken into certain directions.

Edgar Bones, some time in 1974, began realising that he was watching everything he loved of this world he was living in, everything that he'd dreamed of fighting for during his early teenage years, begin slowly crumbling to dust, and that he had no power to change it. He tried to conceal it, because by then, it was quite clear what might happen to those who spoke out too loudly. For a good long while, too, he thought he was good enough that no one noticed his rebellious views.

One person, did, though, the one person that ultimately truly mattered – Albus Dumbledore, his old Transfigurations Professor and the newly appointed Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.

It was in the chaos of the no-confidence vote in Eugenia Jenkins following the November Disappearances of 1975 that Dumbledore approached Edgar, through an old school friend and fellow alumnus of the Dracones Dormientes Society, inviting him for a conversation at a Muggle flat in London. That night, Dumbledore made an offer to a downtrodden, disillusioned young man of thirty that rekindled all his hopes in a better world and put to use all the loyalty and drive that had once brought a young boy of fourteen into a world of older boys and girls sharing his vision of the future. He made an offer of acceptance into a nascent network of people who wanted to actively fight the creeping corruption and fecklessness of the Ministry, who wanted to actively train and hopefully militarise to stand as a wall against the increasingly vile violence of the Death Eaters, who foresaw the darkest days yet to come and could do nothing but rise up to be beacons of light in them.

Edgar could do nothing but accept, and so he became a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and regretted it not for a moment since.

All of which brought him to this moment, seated in Dumbledore's office in the late summer of 1976, to discuss an active mission that he was to take on in the coming weeks and months, one whose failure didn't bear thinking on.

"If this is true, Professor, then the amount of effort that has gone into this is astounding," Edgar noted absent-mindedly as he studied the case file Dumbledore had placed before him even as he'd outlined the most important points. "Fomenting a wave of pro-Muggle legislature behind the backs of his prominent political supporters... no doubt he is seeking to provoke his base into strong sentiment against the Wizengamot. But which part of his base?"

"That is something I have attempted to learn these past few weeks, with moderate success," Dumbledore answered. "I believe a strong clue might be found in the second intelligence report I have received."

"The murder case," Edgar guessed, flipping through several parchments until he reached the copy of the final Auror report submitted to the Wizengamot for criminal charges against one Deacon Lister. It read quite predictably bland on first glance – a couple married almost straight out of Hogwarts, marriage of about seventy-five years with no children living, history of spousal abuse though never taken further than hospitalisation reports for the most severe of injuries as the wife never pressed any charges. No true defence at the trial, either; the man seemed almost pleased with himself over his deed.

If one went a bit deeper into it, though, there _was_ something of interest there, Edgar noticed, focusing on a separate internal report he was relatively certain he didn't have clearance to be reading. At sentencing, Deacon Lister had taken the decision of ten years in Azkaban rather more violently than anyone would have expected from his confession of the murder – he'd threatened to assassinate members of the Wizengamot present at his trial, and had even attempted to do the act in that moment by stealing a wand off of an Auror. He'd been duly restrained and transferred to Azkaban with heightened caution and no further incidents of note, but the conclusion of the classified report detailed improved security measures to be implemented for the members of the Wizengamot in response to the threat, chief among which was the assignment of remote-activatable Portkeys out of the official emblem of the Wizengamot, the grey 'W' that was stitched into every member's robe.

"I didn't know this was implemented."

"Yes, that was deemed to be the safest move, though whether safest to the lives of the Wizengamot members or simply their political careers has been a matter of some gossip among those who know of these measures."

"It must be a simultaneous, focused strike that can be judged accidental in the subsequent investigation," Edgar said, turning his mind towards attempting to divine Dumbledore's thought process. "He must also already have new people positioned such that they could easily take over the seats, which means that most targeted seats will likely be elected, rather than hereditary, unless there is internal strife within families that he could use – not likely to be a common case. If he is truly behind Deacon Lister's murder of his wife, then we must assume that the end result was the implementation of these new security measures, which means he had already planned how to exploit them to cause the deaths needed in order for his supporters to gain a majority in the Wizengamot. Which means that their plan must involve the key Portkeys failing at a crucial, hazardous moment."

So far, so clear, Edgar thought. It still left them floundering, as they didn't have leads on too many things they needed to know in order to prevent this tragedy – the identities of the targets and perpetrators, the time and place of the attack, the method of causing mass casualties.

"My informant obtained one final piece of information," Dumbledore said. "Lord Voldemort has developed a rather whimsical interest in wizarding architecture, specifically in the original construction plans of the Ministry headquarters under Whitehall."

Edgar felt himself paling as the implications slotted into place. "He means to bring the Ministry down upon our heads!"

"That was my conclusion as well. At the very least, it gives us a method, and thus the ability to design countermeasures that should keep the whole street from collapsing and potentially killing hundreds in addition to the Wizengamot members whose Portkeys would fail at the crucial moment."

Dumbledore rested his entwined hands on his lips for a long moment as he held Edgar's gaze calmly; Edgar stared back at the old wizard, feeling shaken but more determined than ever to do everything in his power to prevent this potential disaster. Finally, when the silence was beginning to border on uncomfortable, Dumbledore stirred, sitting back in his chair and opening his posture once again.

"We shall need to divide our efforts, Mr Bones. I will focus on discovering the identities of the Wizengamot members in danger; your task will be to unearth the most likely perpetrators. We _must not _rouse Lord Voldemort's suspicions, so you must keep this as limited as possible. Is there anyone in your department that you would trust to aid you in this without asking too many questions?"

Edgar huffed, rubbed his lips thoughtfully as he sorted through the names of the people with whom he had more than a simply amiable working relationship. At the end, he only had one name for his old professor.

"Frankly, sir, the only person I'd trust with this would be Mad-Eye Moody."

Dumbledore's eyebrows rose in indulgent disbelief. "Alastor's loyalty to the Ministry has been quite firm since the early years of our acquaintance; why do you feel he would be receptive to an unsanctioned investigation into an unreported threat against the Wizengamot?"

"Because he is, above all, a pragmatist," Edgar replied promptly. "He will grumble, no doubt, but he will see the importance in keeping everything hushed up until the last moment, and no disrespect, sir, but I think your assessment of his loyalty is somewhat skewed – Mad-Eye Moody is loyal to law and order, not the Ministry. While they have coincided very firmly until recently, this shadow war being fought is changing things for all of us, him included."

"Very well. Your instincts are impressive, Mr Bones, and I shall put my trust in them. I do not believe we have too much time, but we should have some. Lord Voldemort is fond of symbolism, and as we have already passed the summer solstice without incident, he will surely not strike before Lughnasadh, on the 1st of August. Whatever we may discover by then will be of utmost importance if we are to prevent a tragedy that will doom our whole world."

"We will be ready by then, Professor," Edgar promised, "if it's the last thing I ever do."

* * *

**"We have** a plan," Stern said, "we have the knowledge to put it into action. And the men are easily put into position. When shall we do it?"

"We need them to be all together for it to work; we can't kill one off at a time or we'll be found out in no time," Butts reasoned.

"Do we actually want all of the Wizengamot together? Think if Dumbledore is in the room. There's no way we're gonna succeed if _he_'s in there." There was a serious reverence for the old wizard that spanned well over Britain. Yap might not quite agree with his policies, but there was no doubt in his mind that Albus Dumbledore was a terrible wizard to reckon with.

"He doesn't come in that often during term time; not unless it's a very serious matter."

Stern's suggestion wasn't at all stupid; indeed it made a lot of logical sense, even though it meant they would have to wait around a month for the opportunity. It was now the beginning of August, and Yap was already getting restless.

"It's always a serious matter if the whole Wizengamot is in session, though," Butts objected.

Conner, without anyone's attention, had started rooting through endless stacks of parchment. When Yap inquired after her actions, she spoke distractedly. "There's a meeting of the International Confederation of Wizards around the middle of September, Dumbledore is going to be bound to attend. Found it! From the 20th to the 24th of September; Dumbledore is going. And, yes! Avery has called a meeting of the Wizengamot on the 22nd to discuss the imprisonment in Azkaban of lower-grade offenders. The motion has been seconded and so it shall go through."

As Conner lifted her eyes from the mess of parchments she had made, Yap suddenly felt all eyes on him. They would follow him through thick and thin, he knew as much. They had given him their all; Butts had not seen any action in months, and had not complained once about it even though it was obvious to anyone who knew him that he was past being antsy or even just restless. Stern had been whiling away his time on tomes about curses and runes, and not smiled in over a month. Conner had taken up the hobby of predicting the results of the Quidditch league (for the following three years), thinking about changes in players and trainers. She hated Quidditch.

"Very well," Yap said. "We have a date, now let's make sure we know what we, all of us, are doing on that day."

"I'll be outside the courtroom with you, and we'll be creating the 'commotion'." The quotation marks Butts made were more than ridiculous. It alleviated Yap's conscience to see him make levity of the situation.

"The Portkeys are mine," Stern announced. "I'll make sure that they're all working as they should be twenty minutes before the members come in to retrieve them. And I will supervise their wearing them, as always."

"I'll be standing outside the changing room, on guard duty," Conner added. "Once the members are changed," she continued, "we will lead them to the lift where we will send them off in small groups with Haig or Moors. We will board the lift with the last group and rendezvous with the rest of the escort on the floor of courtroom one."

"As soon as we hear your arrival, I will activate the runes and wait," Yap followed as though reading from a pre-written script.

"Haig and Moors will take point in escorting the members of the Wizengamot through the lower corridor and into the courtroom, and Conner and I will close the ranks," Stern picked up. "Once the Wizengamot is inside the courtroom with Haig and Moors, we will go back towards the lift."

"I will Obliviate Stern and order him to call for help as soon as I hear the explosion, while at the same time run towards the two of you, Obliviate you in turn and then cast the spell on myself." Conner appeared confident in herself, but Yap knew that this was going to be the trickiest part.

"Will you have time to Obliviate the two of us and then yourself, though?"

Conner smirked cockily, but Yap could see the uncertainty beneath the bravado. "Sure. You know I know what I'm doing, and I can be quick about it. I'm not removing years of our service together from your mind, after all."

"Conner," Yap tried to caution her.

Oddly enough, it was Stern who interjected to support the plan - further proof that their personal relationship would never compromise their commitment to the cause. "The alternative is we all get put into Azkaban, yeah? Then let's do it precisely as Conner suggests, it's a sensible plan. We've always had each others' back, and we need to do the sensible thing here."

"Very well," Yap declared, against his better judgement. "Then that's what we're going to do. But, just in case, you'll be teaching me some Obliviation."

"You've got a deal, boss."

"Before your arrival, Butts and I will 'try' to enter the courtroom but find it to be impossible due to the fact that the door will be the first thing to collapse. We should be injured enough to allay suspicions on us, but not enough for it to be fatal." Yap took a deep breath. "None of you has to do any of this," he said for the umpteenth time. "If at any moment you think you have a problem with the plan, you tell me and we'll abort the entire mission. We can Obliviate each other before it happens. We'll be absolutely none-the-wiser and just spend the next few years wondering why on earth we're working the most boring job there is."

They looked at him as though he had sprouted a second-head, courtesy of a transfiguration gone wrong. It was agreement enough for him. Yap took down the privacy spells around his office. Yes, things were proceeding. Wizarding Britain would be bettered.

* * *

**"This is** not the way we do our job, Bones," Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody grumbled at Edgar. The two Aurors were shut away in Moody's office, away from prying eyes, in the one spot where Bones was certain no one would be able to spy on them by any means – Moody's paranoia was near-legendary after all these years on the job, and had only gotten worse as the threat of Lord Voldemort had intensified. As all Senior Aurors, Moody had an office to himself, small by comparison to the rooms of the Head and Deputy Head of the Auror Office, but certainly well-earned; the position of Senior Auror was a coveted one, and hard to be promoted into, as it was usually limited in number.

"Nothing about the last year has been the way we normally do our jobs, Moody," Edgar retorted with calm patience born of more than a decade working together. Moody hadn't been Edgar's mentor during his Auror Training, but Edgar had had plenty of opportunities to work closely with him nonetheless, as he'd been assigned to Moody's team since the last of his training years. "And if anyone knows that walls have eyes and ears in this place, it's you."

"Yes, yes, no need to convince _me_ of constant vigilance. Now, then, where did you get all this information from?"

"Professor Dumbledore," Edgar admitted; lying to Moody was the surest way of rousing his suspicion and thus his recalcitrance, so truth it was, even if it wasn't going to go down very well.

It didn't, of course – Moody narrowed his healthy eye in displeasure. "Did you, now?"

Edgar raised his eyebrow in a pointed, silent comment. Moody harrumphed, pinched his lips until they were indistinguishable from the rest of his already craggy face, and turned his attention back to the file Edgar had presented him with.

"They'll be needing to tamper with the Portkeys," he began, tapping his finger against the folder rhythmically. "Which means they'll need access to the room where the robes are stored. That's under the regular Wizengamot guarding schedule."

"How many people have been read into the newest security measures?"

"This cockamamie called 'improved protection measures'?" Moody scoffed with a nod of his head to the secret report of Deacon Lister's threats to the Wizengamot. "All of the Wizengamot members, the security detail, the leadership of the DMLE, and us Senior Aurors."

"About two hundred people; no wonder Dumbledore's informant knew of it, then!"

"That's political correctness for you, Bones; if you were to ask me, it'd be only Dumbledore, Crouch, my mother and the Senior Aurors running the protection detail who'd know, _and _the person who set up all the Portkeys would've been duly Obliviated, too. But does anyone ask old Mad-Eye anything except to run back out into the field every time the newest batch of incompetents buggers something up while the rest of the government is pretending we've not been at war for the last five years? Of course not. All that horseshite about favouritism, as if old Lobelia Moody understands the meaning of the word."

"I am not disagreeing with you on any of it, Moody," Edgar assured him. "But it doesn't help us narrow things down at all, then."

"It certainly doesn't. And who knows how many people Voldemort's turned over around this place. For all we know, might be some of the Aurors are in on it; with how they've been multiplying around here, I wouldn't be surprised. No, this line of inquiry won't give us anything to work with."

"Focus on preventing it, instead, then, and catch the culprits after the fact?"

"It'd certainly be easier, though I'm not giving up on identifying the perpetrators beforehand if we get a chance. No, the true trick'll be figuring out _when_ it's supposed to happen," Moody said, looking up from the case folder to look at Edgar with both of his eyes; as had become quite usual, his magical eye had been circling around during his perusal of the documents. "When, and what magic _precisely_ they intend to use. That way we can neutralise it without them being any the wiser until their plan goes ka-boom in their faces."

"We know they want to cause structural instability to the building; it'll be a targeted attack that we could conceivably write off as an accident, so it makes sense to go with a cave-in. That means it'll have to be either an explosive device in the ceiling or a spell working directly on the stonework."

"Yes, it's not likely he'd be able to place his own people in these seats if there's doubt as to their deaths."

"I'll take that angle, then, do some research into magic that could do something of the kind."

"I'll see if I can figure out in what way they intend to tamper with the Portkeys; worst case scenario, we make new Portkeys and replace them in time. Which brings us back to the question of the attack's timing. Without that, you can throw all this down the Thames, Bones."

"Professor Dumbledore said You-Know-Who prefers symbolic significance; he believes that the attack will occur on one such day, and not randomly."

"Oh, stuff that up his wrinkly arse. Dumbledore can play at guessing what's in that man's head all he likes; you, however, are an Auror, Bones, so think like one!"

Clearing his throat, Edgar accepted Moody's sharp words as constructive criticism and tried to do as he'd been bid. "Dumbledore will need to be absent from the session; anything involving him would be far too risky at this stage, and he can't have his plan failing."

"So we find out when Dumbledore is certain not to be there, and start with those dates. Then you can take Dumbledore's psychological insight into the bastard and see if anything of worth pops up."

"And if it doesn't? Do you think it'd be worth asking Dumbledore to change his schedule to coincide with a relevant date?"

"And risk Voldemort figuring out? Definitely not! In any case, if the plan is in late stages, then the date has already been decided upon, and we'd have no guarantee they'd change it even if something better came along."

"Fair enough." With a nod, Edgar got to his feet. "Let's talk in say, a week? That should give us both enough time to dig into our respective avenues of investigation."

"Bones," Moody stalled him, bending down to dig about a pile of case files stacked on the floor by his desk. When he straightened back in his chair a couple of minutes later, he had one of the files in his hand, extended in Edgar's direction. "Anyone asks, I've assigned you a case and you need to update me on it."

It was a rather mundane violent robbery case, but with a somewhat more prominent victim – a high-end jewellery store that specialized in charms to alter appearance, and with a politically well-connected owner. Certainly something Moody would want frequent updates on, but also something simple enough that Edgar wouldn't be wasting precious limited time on it instead of foiling Voldemort's coup attempt.

"And take your time with it."

"As much time as it takes for the other thing," Edgar agreed.

He left Moody's office with the intention of directly beginning his research into magical architecture and the best ways of foiling it; there was no time to be lost, not when the fate of the Wizarding world depended on it.

* * *

**A/N:** The title of Part 2 comes from the quote by the American writer of inspirational maxims,  
William Arthur Ward:

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist **adjusts the sails**."


	5. Cunning Passages, Contrives Corridors P3

**Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors**  
**(and Issues)**

**Part 3**  
**Between the Disastrous and the Unpalatable  
**

**The tension** had risen to unprecedented levels. There was always a certain degree of anxiety when going into a dangerous situation; whether there was an assurance of an exchange of spells or the situation was unknown, every Auror worth a damn would feel the rush of danger creeping on them. What Yap had done, placing himself and his most trusted in a dangerous situation of his own devising, went against all of his training. It didn't matter that he was relying on three weathered Aurors, nor that his own experience was rivalled by few who were still in service. He had kept up a steady training schedule for himself and his three subordinates, and he still felt the odd sensation of a man going to meet his end. And yet, if it were only his own life, he would not feel as conflicted as he did.

In the end they had to rely on two more individuals to accomplish the task - Topsy Ellsworth and Dymock Eifion, who would have been scheduled in Yap's and Stern's places regularly on the date, had conveniently relinquished their posts. The first one, on the premise that she had suffered an injury (which was true enough, except the injury was self-inflicted); the second one, with the excuse that he had been asked to be best man at his brother's nuptials in old country Wales (and if he'd had to tell his brother that the 22nd of September was the only day he could take off work, who would look into that?). Still, the two had not asked a single question, and Yap knew them well enough to understand that their conscience wouldn't have made them talk of the events that were about to happen, not even to each other.

"We aren't too late to go back on our plan," he declared as he saw Conner and Stern approach in that close proximity which indicated they had spent the previous night together. Butts was late - not late on the appointed hour of their meeting, but Butts was always the first to arrive, and so Yap couldn't help but feel as though the man's delay indicated that Butts wasn't as confident as he ought to be under the circumstances.

Conner gave him a look that was close to a threat, and Yap knew not to repeat himself in front of her.

"Where's Butts?" Stern asked, as though Yap had not even spoken.

"I'm here," the man declared gruffly. "I'm not late, am I?"

He was adjusting his robes slightly, and it appeared as though he was uncomfortable in his own shoes. Yap wondered, had the bulky man been there a couple of moments before when Yap had made his suggestion, would he have taken the proposition of going back on their steps and kept to his job as though nothing had ever been planned? It was a dangerous thought for Yap to entertain mere hours before he was to trust Butts to help him kill twelve people. And it wasn't his movements only which Yap had come to read as signs of fear; no, the main reason for Butts' discomfort was to be found in the man's eyes and the light hidden therein. There was no glint of anticipation, no resolve to be found in them, only the great disquiet of a man going to his demise for all the wrong reasons.

But Yap didn't care about reasons, and if what drove Butts to follow instructions was his loyalty to his team, then Yap would not begrudge him that.

Besides, their work to prepare the mission last night had given them all very little time to sleep. Butts had acted as a lookout for Stern as he'd adjusted the Portkeys to malfunction, while Yap and Conner had headed to the courtroom and rigged it with the runes. Conner was truly good at her job and had instructed Yap perfectly, but they had both thought it best to leave nothing to chance and so had worked together. Conner had had to do some research on magical engineering to even find the right runes. Their objective was to kill members of the Wizengamot, not to make the entire Ministry collapse on itself - not to mention the fact that Whitehall, one of the busiest Muggle streets of London, was on top of them. And so she'd done extensive research on how magical buildings were destroyed without damaging anything other than the intended area. This had, in turn, led to some refresher courses of their runic knowledge and, finally, to spell practice. The previous night, Conner had helped him place all of the runes inside the courtroom, a job that would have been tremendously tedious had it not been so nerve-racking. It had taken them quite a long time, too, but by the end of it Yap had felt reassured.

And now things were all set to go. They revised their plan for the umpteenth time that morning, but soon had to separate to attend their different duties. Even as Conner and Stern headed for the dressing room, Yap led Butts to the doors of Courtroom One.

The long corridor that led from the lift to the door of the courtroom itself was bathed in a silence that was not often to be found within the Ministry itself. There was no incessant chatter, not a single person who loitered or gossiped just for the sake of it. There was also only one route to follow, a straight one that led from the lift to the door of the courtroom; no doors which led to other rooms, no side corridors to create an intricate labyrinth in which only the most accustomed frequenters would find their way around. It was all exactly as Yap had planned it with his men. And yet it was the one mission Yap felt least confident about in his entire career.

There was usually no use in talking to Butts before a mission. The man didn't offer reassurances and wouldn't take any, so it was no little surprise to Yap when it was he who broke the silence. "Stop fretting. You've walked this path countless times before, no need to look like a recruit."

It wasn't so much that Butts never rebuked his superior - he did that plenty of times. It was more the fact that Butts never - _ever_ \- underestimated a mission, nor the feelings a mission provoked in his fellow Aurors. But Yap preferred to chalk that down to Butts' own apprehension rather than to any kind of deception on the man's part. Butts might not be as loyal as a Hufflepuff, but he wouldn't betray a man who had saved his life on numerous occasions. It wasn't a matter of being indebted to Yap either - Merlin knew Butts had saved Yap's skin more times than was right to count. No, Butts simply had an ideal of brotherhood that he would not betray. In his mind, Yap was an older brother, and one did not forsake kin.

Twenty more steps taken, and then Yap's heartbeat slowed. Curiously enough, distinguishing the courtroom door's contours in front of them relaxed him, as though seeing the objective was enough to make him forget the dangerous feat they had decided to accomplish.

Finally, he and Butts came to stand in front of the door, opened it and pretended to do a thorough examination of its insides, while at all times Yap was making sure that the runes he and Conner had inscribed the previous night were precisely where they were supposed to be - further proof, if any was needed, that their plan had not been unearthed. And once everything had been examined to the point where it would have passed any Auror's keen scrutiny, they went back outside and stood on each side of the door in the reigning silence, waiting patiently for the members of the Wizengamot to make their appearance from whence Yap and Butts themselves had arrived.

The first ding of the doors as they opened resonated through the empty walls, the silence that followed indicating to Yap that Moors and Haig had arrived. It was the one thing none of them had been happy about, that two good Aurors would have to lose their lives in the plan, but it couldn't be helped, and plenty more would be saved as a consequence. Haig and Moors would be martyrs of a cause they didn't know they were fighting for.

Yap had little time for ruminations, though, because the following ding of the lift was accompanied by the unknowing chatter of the first batch of Wizengamot members. There was a total of fifty members on the Wizengamot, forty-seven of which would be in attendance. The lift would be filled with a maximum of five members at a time, which meant that the lift would run ten times before everyone was at the right level. Yap now needed to count the time it took the lift from going back up and down again - while he knew the exact time in principle, members of the Wizengamot were not as efficient as Aurors in boarding and disembarking from a lift. He needed to make sure that he cast his spells in coincidence with the opening of the lifts doors, when the penultimate batch of Wizengamot members arrived. To act any sooner would risk the explosion happening too soon, and to act any later would risk Moors and Haig hearing the incantation.

His calculations stopped at fifty-six seconds, but he repeated them for the next round of members and discovered it to be fifty-one. After the fifth batch had arrived he could confidently say that the average trip took around fifty-three seconds, and his theory was proven correct by the seventh arrival. On the ninth, he was ready to strike.

One look at Butts when he counted twenty seconds having passed, and then he turned around to the open courtroom door, and his lips started forming the incantation, his vocal chords producing all the correct sounds, even as his hand deftly moved the wand he was holding. He didn't expect the force of a full binding curse to stop him midway, though, nor the realisation that it had come from Butts. He was disarmed in the space of a few seconds and then his wand was in Butts' hands.

Yap couldn't believe what was happening. Months and months spent preparing this plan. Getting reassigned to what was essentially a desk job; having to wait patiently for the perfect opportunity to strike; reworking the shifts and the operation of the Wizengamot detail in such a way that it would allow him to carry out his plan in the most spectacular way, with no suspicion whatsoever falling back on him; all of this had been for nothing. All of this, and the careers of his most trusted men - his _friends_. He had no idea what was happening to Conner and Stern, but he didn't think they'd manage to Obliviate themselves and escape capture. And even if they did, they'd been betrayed by Butts. Butts, who knew every single detail of the plan. Butts, who had worked alongside them for years.

Butts, who moved as though he wasn't Butts at all.

And suddenly that morning's not-actually-late arrival didn't seem so alien anymore. It wasn't Butts against him, but someone who was impersonating Yap's faithful friend. Yap felt such desperation that even if he had not been bound by a spell, he was certain he wouldn't have been able to move.

* * *

**The moment** he had Yap bound, Edgar sprang into action, snatching the man's wand out of his rigid fingers and tucking it away in his own robes. His eyes flying over the wall, he located the trip brick and tapped it sharply three times with his wand.

"_Moneo caecum._"

The pulse of magic flew out through the walls three times, right as the ding of the lift rang out. Grimacing, Edgar shifted Yap right against the wall and cast a hasty Disillusionment Charm on him, managing to straighten out back into his previous position right as the five Wizengamot members, in the company of Auror Haig, came into view. Haig lifted his eyebrow in question at Yap's absence, but when Edgar pointed confidently with his thumb at the courtroom, he didn't raise any further alarm and simply left the Wizengamot members to Edgar while he hastened back to the lift.

It took altogether some fifteen or so seconds for the Wizengamot members to enter the room, and as soon as they did, Edgar had his wand back out again and was tapping the trip brick again.

"_Moneo propinquum_."

The warning pulse went out again, this time flashing red through the wall. When he heard the sound in the courtroom rise up, he turned back to Yap and removed the Disillusionment Charm, binding him with rope and pulling him to his feet right as Aurors Wentworth, Hughes and Jalali came out. They, along with Beddock, who was still inside the courtroom sorting out the Wizengamot members, had been briefed on the deception Edgar had pulled, and so knew to expect he'd be Polyjuiced. Moody and he had judged it better to keep the number of people in the know to the minimum, but given that part of Edgar's job this morning as Butts had been to smuggle his four team members into the room without Yap or the other two noticing, sharing this intel had been unavoidable, and it did make things much easier now, when he had a good forty-five minutes yet before the Polyjuice wore off.

"Wentworth, Hughes, take him and Moors into custody," Edgar instructed. "Jalali, with me; we need to secure Haig."

Amita Jalali followed without question, though she did give him a dubious look – Polyjuiced as Butts, he was a good head shorter than her, and he had to admit to himself that he was finding it as strange as she no doubt was. The sway of her glossy black ponytail at the nape of her brown-skinned neck was still a familiar sight, though, and helped him shake off the momentary discomfort of the Polyjuice.

Haig practically ran into their arms half-way to the lift doors, which was something of a lucky break, since he hadn't been expecting them. He stopped dead the moment he saw Jalali, and his wand wavered in indecision, which Edgar didn't waste, casting a quick _Expelliarmus_ while Jalali stepped in front with her own wand drawn.

"Auror Haig, I need you to come with me," she said authoritatively.

"On whose authority?"

"On the authority of Head Auror Moody. I am taking you into custody on suspicion of attempted murder and treason," he answered, pulling out a rolled-up parchment from her pocket.

"What?" he blanched, taking an instinctive step back.

"It will be better for you if you don't resist," Edgar said. "If you are innocent, you have nothing to worry about."

The man looked between the two of them and his eyes finally landed on the detention warrant Jalali had drawn his attention to. Clearly more than a little apprehensive, he nonetheless extended his hands in front of himself and allowed her to cast a binding spell.

"Rendezvous with the others and hand Haig into their custody, then check on Beddock and call in the bomb squad to dismantle those bloody runes; I'm going back up to see how the rest of the team is handling the other two." Edgar instructed Jalali, who nodded her acquiescence; she knew the plan just as well as all the rest of Moody's team. At the words 'bomb squad', Haig had paled considerably, and his eyes were focused intently on the courtroom.

"They're safe," Jalali said brusquely though not unkindly, her usual attitude. "They're being removed from the room as we speak by a member of our team."

"Oh, thank Merlin," Haig murmured, allowing himself to be steered forward. Leaving his team member to her work, Edgar hurried onwards to the empty lift shaft.

If everything had gone according to plan, Moody's magical eye would have allowed him to see the first of the two signals and know to get his own half of the plan into motion – namely, securing the last Wizengamot members waiting on the lift and taking Stern and Conner into custody. Edgar's half of the plan had been to prevent the triggering of the explosive runes while the rest of his half of the team – Jalali, Beddock, Wentworth and Hughes – waited for his signal. Upon getting it, they were to help him secure the other two Aurors on guard duty today and ensure the safety of the Wizengamot members by stripping them of their robes in case their tampered Portkeys were rigged to blow as insurance, and then get them away with the secure Portkeys Moody's team had brought with them.

Once done, the two halves of the team were supposed to meet up on this floor. That no one had come down since Edgar had sent the first signal meant that something had either gone wrong, or that perhaps things here had gone faster than expected; his sense of time passage always did end up skewed when he was in the middle of an operation.

While the lifts were the most common way of transportation through the bowels of the Ministry, Aurors had their own ways of travel that didn't rely on them. Tugging the levitating platform out of his pocket, Edgar tapped it with his wand and threw it on the ground, where it unfolded itself into a three-by-three-feet sheet of white wood with shoe-stickers in the middle. Edgar stepped on and, as soon as he'd secured himself firmly to it, felt the platform link up to his wand. Then it was just a matter of steering it up to the nearest free lift hatch on the correct floor and making his way back to where the rest of his team was supposed to be.

What he found was definitely _not_ what he'd been hoping to see – Moody and the other five members of the team were standing in a loose semi-circle around the open lift door, wands drawn, and inside the lift, Conner and Stern both had a Wizengamot member tightly pressed against their fronts, at wandpoint. The lift had clearly been jammed, so they couldn't go anywhere, but that didn't seem to be worrying the last two members of the day's security staff, who were demanding to be allowed to leave before they'd release the two terrified elderly gentlemen in official robes.

"There's no way out for you lot, and your leader's been caught already," Moody was saying in his most authoritative, stern voice, standing a step in front of the rest of the group. "Don't be idiots; let them go and surrender, and things won't go as badly for you as they could."

Stern smiled sardonically. "You forget, Moody, that we're Aurors like you. We know precisely what is going to happen if we surrender."

"As things stand, you can get two free conspirators who will run to the farthest corner of the planet and never bother you again, for the price of two Wizengamot members."

"You know I can't do that," Moody replied.

Taking quick stock of the situation, and keeping very firmly in mind that he was at the moment still Polyjuiced as Butts, Edgar snuck behind everyone to the very left end of his group and stepped forward.

"Mates, do as he says," he said in his best imitation of Hurst Butts.

"Butts, what–" Stern said in bewilderment, turning instinctively towards Edgar.

"Traitor!" Conner, quicker on the uptake, hissed next to him.

It was enough of a distraction for Hideo Kimura, the still-gangly Trainee standing at the other edge of the semi-circle, to stun Conner, who was closest to him. Or, at least, it would've been, but Kimura was only a year into his training, and he'd never been in this sort of standoff before. It took him just a second too long to react, giving Conner enough time to jerk her hostage in the way of the _Stupefy_ and send a counter-spell at Kimura while she stumbled with the now dead-weight of the unconscious Wizengamot member in her arms.

Kimura tried to raise a shield instead of ducking away, and the spell blasted through it, hitting him in the shoulder and making him howl in pain as blood spurted from his arm. The already tense situation erupted into chaos in seconds, with spells flying in all directions. Moody's team was well-trained for the most part, and they all had designated roles in these sorts of situations – two of the six members were always on shielding duty, while the rest were to force the advance, working in pairs – but it was still close-quarter battles in the middle of the Ministry in the middle of a work day and two hostages' lives at stake.

Edgar left the battle to the others and sprinted behind their line to Kimura, who was being covered by someone's wavering shield charm and looked already frighteningly pale from blood loss, the almost black pool of liquid beneath him soaking into his robes. Sliding to his knees, Edgar cast his own shield charm, far stronger than the other one, then tugged the Trainee into a prone position and tried to reach the wound, but ran into unexpected resistance as Kimura began fighting him.

"I'm Edgar!" he barked sharply. "Let me work before you bleed to death, you fool!"

"Bones?" the kid wheezed – and he was a kid, barely nineteen if that, almost fresh from Hogwarts, with still spotty skin and a mop of shiny black hair he always kept tying and retying back, almost as if it was a nervous tick.

Ignoring his dark, frightened eyes, Edgar tore his sleeve to get to the wound and began casting healing spells in the regular repertoire of first-aid they were all forced to learn and do refresher courses on yearly – cleaning the wound first and then casting deep-tissue mending spells followed by stitching spells and spells to induce blood clotting. Luckily, the wound wasn't of the sort that would require a special counter-spell to close it, and Edgar had the boy triaged within a few minutes.

When he finally sat back on his haunches and looked up, he found that the battle was over as well; the Wizengamot member still standing on his feet - Faysal Shafiq - was being escorted away by one Auror, while two others were carefully taking away the other, Stunned Wizengamot member - Erskine Urquart, if Edgar had seen correctly. And Moody was standing at the lift entrance, staring at the two bodies on the floor – Conner and Stern were both dead.

Getting to his feet, Edgar walked over to Moody and looked down at his two dead colleagues.

"Well, shite."

"Succinctly put," Moody agreed with a grunt. "The others?"

"All subdued without any incident; you were right, Yap was the one set to activate the runes. I let him start his casting before Body-Binding him, he said enough of the spell that it should be identifiable as the triggering mechanism when my memories are reviewed. The rest of the Wizengamot is safe and the robes have been collected as evidence. My feeling is that Haig and Moors weren't in on it; they weren't at Yap's little conclave this morning, and Haig looked properly disturbed when I mentioned the bomb squad. They should be in to disarm the runes and secure the site by now, as well. The two who called in absent today, that Yap and Butts were stepping in for, I've sent for them to be picked up, as well. We'll know if they're part of it soon enough."

"And Butts?"

"I'll transfer him into official custody as soon as the Polyjuice wears off," Edgar replied. He took a deep breath and let it out, allowing the adrenaline jitters and his hyperfocused state to leach out with it at least somewhat. "It's done, we've managed it."

"It's not done until the investigation is over and we have everyone involved feeding the Dementors in Azkaban," Moody replied testily. "We still need to find the link between Yap and Voldemort's organisation, Bones. Otherwise Dumbledore can kiss his plans on using this to bring him down goodbye. You there, Trainee Kimura, what were you doing, hesitating! Why weren't you paying attention! Constant vigilance!"

Letting the big boss go and vent some of his frustration on the kid, Edgar moved to make himself known to the rest of the team – unlike his lot, they hadn't been informed that he'd be Polyjuiced, and were naturally more than a little confused by seeing him standing above the corpses of those who were supposed to be his co-conspirators and having a chat with Moody. After all, he still had the rest of the investigation to coordinate, and as Moody had pointed out, there wasn't a moment to be lost.

* * *

**Augustus gritted** his teeth. This was a disaster. A complete and utter disaster. He had miscalculated. One thing he had not accounted for, and it was precisely what he should have taken into consideration. Fanaticism did not always take on the form which one expected of it. There was a madness at the heart of every fanatic, a struggle to conform inner thought with outside stimuli, that often led to the breaking of boundaries which, if left to its own devices, the mind itself would not have found necessary to strain. Anger, resentment, dissatisfaction were all necessary to incite a mind to rebel, but if left to simmer too long inside the individual, with no clear outlet and with the addition of the constraints of society - bloated in the life of an Auror whose job was to enforce a law he did not believe in - then became instruments of insanity. And unlike the clearly identifiable derangement of some individuals, of which Augustus knew many, not all neuroses manifested themselves in the loss of ability to function within society.

But that explanation, unfortunately, would not be enough to get the Dark Lord not to Crucio _Augustus_ into insanity. Because Augustus had expected Yap to see the list of names he had provided and think to himself that those were the appropriate targets, and that hadn't happened. Because Augustus had thought that those who had been fed morsels of information about the overall plan were all trustworthy, and they hadn't been. But where the first mistake was all Augustus', the latter wasn't. That would save him, because Augustus was not idle nor, indeed, was he resourceless enough not to have thought of twenty ways in which to save his life in case of failure.

There were things he could yet do to prevent his Master's retribution to befall him in its harshest form. But first he needed to know what Yap had planned _exactly_.

Madoc Priddy was his first port of call. The man was a true expert in the field of Portkeys. It was easy for Augustus to Imperius the man to make him interfere with the Portkeys again until the list Augustus had compiled under the aegis of Lord Voldemort would be the same as the one the Aurors would find in their investigation. It wasn't a step Augustus took lightly, because it furthered the risk of discovery, but at the same time he needed his Master to think Augustus had been as little unsuccessful as possible. Every added degree of failure increased Augustus' chances of death, and while Augustus was a Slytherin most in his ambitions, he was one also in his sense of self-preservation.

In the meantime, he ensured that his Auror moles were promptly updating him with the information of the Auror office on the attempt. He had made use of secondary assets, who were close enough to the investigative team not to raise suspicion by their presence, but at the same time not important enough not to risk losing. The last thing he needed was for an investigation on the Dark Lord's most trusted men within the Auror corps to start.

His first enormous risk, of course, was that he was Imperiusing a man in the middle of the Auror central office within the Ministry. Still, Augustus had no other recourse, and his skills ensured that he could cast the spell with as little effort as the Imperius curse could be cast, and move out of the way in a very short time. After all, he knew the lights and shadows of every floor and every office better than the architects who had long ago designed the Ministry of Magic.

More than any of that, however, Augustus was grappling with the bulk of information he was receiving from his informants. It was a lot coming in at once even for a man as skilled in the arts of subtlety as he was. And yet Augustus didn't have more than two hours before his shift would be over and the Dark Lord's incessant call would become physically unbearable even to him - the Mark on his arm was stinging far more pressingly than usual, and only through his post would Augustus be able to excuse his late arrival, even though he expected punishment for it. So he forced himself to lower his heart rate and to regain the sharpness of his mind.

A Protean charmed bracelet on his wrist was the means through which his informants relayed key information to Augustus: through intention, they would spell brief messages on their own bracelets, and Augustus would feel his trinket get warmer and read what they sent along. The first message he had received that morning to alert him that something hadn't gone according to plan had come from Lorelei Bullard. The woman, prompted by Augustus to make sure that evidence of blame against Yap and his cohort would be found, had stumbled upon a list of twelve names, all Members of the Wizengamot, drawn up by a hand she recognised as belonging to Ernest Stern. And while Augustus had been glad to know that the man had been careless enough to leave evidence around, he had been less happy to learn that the list was not a match to his own prescribed one.

Through the Protean Charm, he had discovered that all the Wizengamot robes had been requisitioned but not analysed on the spot. The piece of information had made him stop dead in his tracks. He had felt like running, rushing, and damning all of his work to salvage this one situation. It had been providential. He could send Priddy to the room where the robes had been sequestrated, ensure that he was caught while attempting to change them back, and get him arrested as a consequence. And so he had Imperiused the man, and while ordering him to really fix the correct Wizengamot robes also set him up for a scapegoat.

When Priddy was out of the main office room, and still under his control, all that remained to do was to walk with him as close as possible to the evidence locker where the Wizengamot's robes were being held. Being inconspicuous was easy for Augustus, but in this case he thought it best to avail himself of an invisibility cloak. It wasn't an item Augustus particularly relished - the things failed more frequently than not, and were not as perfect as the name made them sound - but the alternative was to be seen close to a man who would be shortly condemned of treason. An invisibility cloak was a logical recourse. After that, his instructions to the pliable Priddy were simple - the man was to gain access to the evidence locker by showing his working credentials, claim to having been sent there by Alastor Moody, the lead investigator in the attempt against the Wizengamot, to check on the Portkeys and their status in order to report the names of those who would have died had the attack been allowed to come to a positive conclusion, and once access had been gained, Priddy was to fix some of the broken Portkeys and fiddle with the two which would have been saved but Augustus had intended to die.

Through the Protean charm, he was informed that while two of the four main conspirators had been arrested, and two other innocent ones along with them, Sheridan Conner and Ernest Stern had been killed while trying to take two Wizengamot members hostage and make their escape. He also learnt that, while the first interrogation was being led, the prisoners were not forthcoming with information, and it seemed very plausible that Veritaserum would have to be employed.

Augustus' mind was quick to reason that the request for Veritaserum had not only not been accepted yet, it hadn't even been made. This, in turn, meant that it could be stalled and slowed. He had to calm his breathing and relax again; he still had over an hour before he had to appear before the Dark Lord, and he trusted in Priddy to finish his job expediently enough, because Augustus still had one last thing to do before finishing his working day.

As time passed, the sting in his arm became less of an annoyance and more of a pronounced pain. The fact that the attempt had not been publicised and that Ministry workers were going about their lives as if nothing had happened was certainly not helping Augustus in gaining time before appearing in front of his Master. Virtually anyone who had been alerted to the fact was confined to the Ministry, aiding either in the investigation or in keeping news of events from leaking to the press. It was a decision Augustus wouldn't have anticipated - nor, indeed, taken - but he understood the principle behind it. Until the reason behind the attack was discovered, the Ministry would be better off concealing its existence. On an investigative basis alone, it would help with rooting out people who knew about the attack and did nothing to prevent it, for they would have no claim to public knowledge to save any slip of the tongue. As for the Minister, before he could understand the attack's provenance, it would be better for him to shield himself from any influence. Part of Augustus had, for that reason, thought that it would have been better to let the Aurors discover all of Yap's intended victims rather than the ones Augustus himself had picked out, but the truth was that Augustus' list had been less obvious in nature, and the plausibility of its being perceived as an attack not necessarily connected with Lord Voldemort would have been greater.

But Augustus knew his Master. And he knew that he would want revenge. He would plan something grandiose and memorable, which would convince the Ministry that if it tried to prevent his ascension to power, all it would gain would be gigantic loss of life.

Priddy finally came back, a slightly lost look in his eyes alerting Augustus that the Imperius charm was weakening. He cast it again, ordering Priddy to go back to his desk immediately after he had Confunded him about the actions he had taken in the last hour, and then released him from the imprisonment altogether.

Finally, Augustus was free to finish his duties. Only one last action was left for him, and with the cool composure of a man who had no care in the world and business to attend to, he walked calmly to his destination.

* * *

**Yap gritted** his teeth. He didn't have his wand with him, and all he knew was that Butts must have been taken as well. As for Conner and Stern, all Yap could do was tell himself that their fate had been much kinder than what his own would be like; no one living would prefer the Kiss to death - and the Kiss was very much what awaited Aloysius Yap. Beyond that, however, there was little he could do to allay his conscience. He had no knowledge of who could have alerted Bones of his plan. What he did know with absolute certainty, however, was that Butts wouldn't have said a word willingly, and so it was all a question of when - there was certainly no _if_ to consider - the investigative team would bring in the Veritaserum.

They were being held in the temporary cells within the Ministry, awaiting further interrogation before being sentenced by the Wizengamot and subsequently sent to Azkaban - probably to enjoy the Kiss.

Around him, he could see nothing much beyond the darkness of the polished black walls and the dim glint of the light shining through the fissure beneath the door that led outside. He had paced the cell's perimeter twice and knew without a doubt where exactly it was. He had placed enough outlaws within these very walls to know it with certainty. There were to be no comforts gained from that knowledge, however. Indeed, hardly any comfort would ever come to him in the future - that much he knew. He had never been a venial man, not with his job and the privations which he had imposed upon himself early on in his career. Still, he had seldomly had a chance to contemplate the future in such grim terms as he was now. Of course, a certain feeling of dread and incumbency had settled upon him ever since this plan had formed in his mind, but never truly had he contemplated the true implications of its failure. Death, which he had nevertheless not discarded until the very last minute, now seemed a veritable chimera.

He laid his head on the cold wall and closed his eyes. His only relief came from the knowledge that he was not a happy man. Content, maybe, but he had spent too much time immersed in the grimness of life to ever be considered happy. No Dementor would be feasting for long on his soul.

He didn't know how much time passed, for in the darkness and the utter silence that pervaded the very stones of this prison it was nigh on impossible to discern the passage of time, but he was roused by a rustle in the air, like the movement of robes. Indeed, as he opened his eyes, he beheld, even in the darkness, a human figure - whether man or woman he was hard-pressed to distinguish. The door hadn't been opened, apparently, and yet Yap trusted his senses well enough to believe that it was not a dream but a true apparition of flesh and bones. He wanted to ask it many questions, but was pervaded by a sudden inability to act upon his will. He knew the clutches of a strong binding curse when he was subjected to one - and a curse it was, for no easy spell would have truly contained him with such perfection for longer than half a minute.

There was nothing to be glimpsed, nothing at all, beyond the shadow of this figure, and no sound to clutch to in recognition. Yap was wholly unable to construct any detail that would alert him to the identity of this individual. His nerves were more unsettled as the time passed with nothing happening. Viscerally, he knew what was about to happen. Why else would anyone come secreted into his holding cell, masquerading their identity, bind him through a powerful curse when already Yap had no tool of defence but his own bare hands, if not to end his life. And yet nothing was happening. No sounds were coming from the figure, no clear intent shone through. And Yap felt stripped and naked, bared to his bones under the scrutiny of eyes he could not see and yet appeared to hate him with loathing unlike any he had ever felt. Loathing stronger than that which Alastor Moody, a fellow Senior Auror with every reason to despise what to him must have felt a betrayal of the Auror corps - though to Yap felt like an attempt at safeguarding wizarding society - had expressed in their preliminary interrogation. And Yap couldn't fathom it either, this hatred. Unless something bigger had been going on. Unless - and he felt utter despair at thinking this - he had been but a pawn on a large chess table. Could he truly have been so downright blind as to not hear a command voice at his back, ordering him to move forwards, step-by-step? Had he truly been so deaf to all that was around him? So naive?

That thought started gnawing at him from the inside, corroding the last bit of life he thought was left in him. And it didn't help that nothing was happening. Because if nothing was happening, Yap couldn't understand, and he needed to. He needed to know more than he needed to be alive and breathe. He had expected an attack of Legilimency at the very least, something to tell him what information he possessed that someone wanted to kill him for. But nothing came. And in the emptiness, Yap died time and time again. For himself and for the men he had loved like siblings and condemned to his own fate.

Suddenly, a small glow appeared to Yap's right side, and Yap could discern the shape of a wrist and with it the contours of the figure's left side. He thought the person in front of him had the wrist of a man. The glow, he evinced, were letters which he could read: even though they were upside down, they were simple enough. _N O W_.

"I am mercy," the voice of a man spoke. Somehow, Yap wasn't reassured at the fact that his last intuition in life had been correct. Nor was he satisfied at the thought that this man was saving him from the Kiss. In death, Yap would have no way to make this man's life any harder. "_Avada Kedavra._"

A green light illuminated the room and the man's eyes reflected it. But Yap had no time to contemplate it, for he had already drawn his last breath. His body remained rigid and in place only until the binding curse was removed from it, and finally it folded in on itself, and pooled on the dark floor, motionless.

* * *

**A/N:** The title of Part 3 comes from the quote by the Canadian-American economist, public official and diplomat,  
John Kenneth Galbraith:

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing **between the disastrous and the unpalatable**."

* * *

For those curious, the two spells that Bones uses would roughly translate from Latin as 'I warn the blind (_Moneo caecum_)' and 'I warn those near (_Moneo propinquum_)'. As was hopefully intuited from the text, the first warning signal is invisible to the naked eye, but noticeable by magical eyes; the second one is a short-range warning signal and one clearly visible by everyone.


	6. Cunning Passages, Contrives Corridors P4

**Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors**  
**(and Issues)**

**Part 4**  
**Success Is Not Final, Failure Is Not Fatal**

**It was** something of a change, to be working on the case in a dedicated room with nine other people coming and going instead of in his little cubicle in secret, but Edgar didn't have much time to appreciate it. As Moody's lead partner on the investigation into the attempted assassination of the Wizengamot, Edgar's job was to be the point-of-contact between all of the other members of the team – Moody had taken over the interrogations of the six apprehended Aurors, and in any case, they all knew that their boss wasn't one for sitting in a conference room and sorting out all the disparate sections of the investigation into a coherent whole, being himself a man of action.

That was perfectly fine; Edgar had had enough action to last him the rest of the investigation, and relished finally being able to see all the pieces of this story that'd only been ideas and conclusions in his head gradually take physical form around him. Too, it was a relief not to be doing any of it alone anymore, even if it meant that he and Moody had to be careful to conceal their early investigatory activities.

Their operation had only received official approval from the Head of the Auror Office early this morning, when Moody had gone to her with the information that, thanks to his infamous magical eye, he'd noticed suspicious, rather well-concealed runes in Courtroom One during his morning circuit around the Ministry, and that minimal research had revealed the runes to be ones used for demolition. It had only taken Head Auror Lobelia Moody ten minutes to confirm that there was a high-profile deliberation scheduled to be conducted in that very courtroom later on today, requiring the presence of all available Wizengamot members, and that there'd been some discrepancies with the security staff, with two Aurors from the regular roster having called in unavailable for the day - evidence enough in her mind to support Moody's supposition that the assassination attempt would happen today, and thus enough grounds to authorise a hastily cobbled together operation to foil it.

In truth, though, Moody and Edgar had worked out the details of the rescue operation over the previous six weeks, and had put it into practice nearly as early. At the same time as Moody had been chasing the legal paperwork so that they could cover their own arses, Edgar had been briefing the rest of their team on their jobs for the day.

Moody and Edgar's very first counter-move in what had turned out to be rather a protracted game of capture-the-flag had been to find a way to force the timing of their opponents' operation. They knew the method that the assassins intended to use and that they'd need to, on the one hand, set up the explosives in the courtroom, and on the other, deliberately cause Portkey malfunctions. The culprits would be most vulnerable during these two activities, so catching them in these acts would prove by far the most efficient way of sabotaging their assassination attempt. For that, though, they'd needed to narrow down the time and locations of the attempt itself.

Timing turned out to be not too difficult in the end – Edgar had gone directly to Dumbledore and requested his fixed schedule until the end of the year, specifically with the interest in finding out when the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot would not be able to attend sittings. Dumbledore had a tendency to pop in and out of these sessions as his schedule allowed, and most of the time, it was impossible to predict his movements. He did, however, turn out to have the yearly International Confederation of Wizards' Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia right at the autumnal equinox – it was a date that was perhaps not quite as symbolic as for instance Samhain, but it was certainly symbolic enough, according to Dumbledore, that Lord Voldemort would consider it for his Wizengamot overthrow. Their tentative confirmation of this had come by way of MW Avery scheduling a full meeting of the Wizengamot on the 22nd of September, and while there was absolutely no concrete evidence for it, Dumbledore was certain that Avery was one of Lord Voldemort's followers.

The courtroom for use hadn't yet been assigned at the time, though there were few big enough to really fit all the Wizengamot members. But they'd known that the assassins would have to go into the cloakroom where the Wizengamot robes were kept under guard, which had also given them a location. The issue had been the fact that they couldn't be certain when the Portkeys might be tampered with, and staking out a room for six weeks was completely unfeasible.

Moody had niftily cut that Gordian knot by going to Lobelia Moody and asking her to schedule a spot-check on the Wizengamot Portkeys for the 20th of September. As, naturally, the word would've gotten out to everyone who knew of the existence of these Portkeys by then, the check was meant to force the assassins to wait with their tampering until _after_ it was conducted – giving Moody and Edgar a far more manageable two days of surveillance duty.

Identifying the perpetrators had proven to be trickier, though Dumbledore had come through on a list of most likely targets by mid-September, just in time to ensure none of their robes would be spot-checked. By that date, too, Moody had managed to whittle down the perpetrator list to about fifty or so individuals, down from two hundred, with the top of the list being occupied by the Aurors in charge of Wizengamot security, given that their freedom of movement was almost equal to the members of the Wizengamot; additionally, Moody had been suspicious of a rather strange staffing reshuffle of that Auror corps branch a bit earlier in the year.

What they'd agreed on in the end was that the best way of preventing a disaster would be to infiltrate the group if at all possible. The easiest way of accomplishing this, when they didn't even know a single member of the group, was to catch them in the act of Portkey sabotage, take one out of the game, and then pretend to be him.

In the very late hours of the 21st of September, on their second consecutive night of surveillance, two men had found their way to the Wizengamot cloakroom. Edgar had easily identified them from his research to be Ernest Stern and Hurst Butts, two of the Aurors from the Auror team under Senior Auror Aloysius Yap, which had recently been reassigned to the Wizengamot security staff.

Stern had gone into the room, while Butts had stayed outside as a lookout; Edgar had kept an eye on him from his hiding place in the corridor, as Moody had taken position inside the cloakroom itself – with his magical eye, he was better equipped to observe the actions of the person actually sabotaging the Portkeys. Moody's task had been to identify all of the Wizengamot targets, while Edgar would take care of the perpetrator. When he'd evaluated the situation, Edgar had decided it more expedient and altogether safer if Butts were his target, rather than Stern – not only because it'd be easier to take Butts out of the game and Polyjuice into him, but also because no doubt the brain behind this operation would want to question Stern on his work after the fact.

Taking Butts by surprise was relatively easy, on the whole – the Auror corps had very good equipment, including superb Invisibility cloaks, and with a charm to silence his own footsteps, sneaking up on Butts and Stunning him took no effort at all; the man hadn't even noticed anything amiss before he'd been rendered unconscious. Edgar had expected at least a bit more of the man, given his work history with the Auror corps, but then even on paper, it had been clear that he was a front-liner rather than an intellectual – an excellent duellist with nerves of steel, but certainly not the type who'd over-analyse any given situation.

He'd stashed Butts in the nearest empty room, tugged a couple of his hairs and Polyjuiced into him, and then had taken his place at Butts' earlier position and waited until Stern was finished. The one piece of information Edgar had needed to extract out of Stern was their meeting spot the next morning. The trick to it, of course, had been not arousing Stern's suspicions, given the fact that Edgar hadn't known whom he'd be impersonating and thus hadn't had time to put together the proper performance. But, it looked like the man was in enough of a hurry to be on his way that he'd gotten sloppy; he had given Edgar the information with minimal fuss and no suspicion whatsoever.

Once he'd parted ways with Stern, Edgar had circled back and met up with Moody, and the two had hauled Butts' unconscious arse into one of the holding cells, where the intake guard on duty was a Trainee pipsqueak whose awe of Moody ensured he'd obey demands without a single question as to the strangeness of the request – the important thing for Moody and Edgar had been to conceal their taking Butts into custody until their operation had gotten official approval, not to mention not tipping off the other conspirators.

For the rest of the night, Moody and Edgar had put together the final plan, working off of the presumption that all of the members of the Auror corps on the Wizengamot security detail tomorrow might be compromised and would need to be taken into custody, though Moody had been quite certain that Yap would be the brains behind the operation – he was the Senior Auror who'd pushed through the reassignment of his own until-then criminal-investigation-oriented team to what had to be a mind-numbing post of Wizengamot security detail, and the fact that he was taking part in the security roster tomorrow was also highly suspect, since as the Senior Auror, he would normally never be doing it. Granted, the short-notice absence of two other Aurors normally scheduled on the roster was a good enough justification for Yap lending a hand, but given Stern and Butts' involvement with the assassination attempt, the actual motivation was very likely to be a nefarious one.

They'd tried to question Butts, too, in the night, though that had certainly been a dead-end – the man had been trained in anti-interrogation techniques during the course of his career, and Moody in the end judged whatever morsel of information they might eventually extract from him as too much wasted time. They'd left the man's cell without any useful intel in favour of doing some more last-minute operation polishing.

So, once Moody's team had been called in and briefed at the crack-arse of dawn on the 22nd, Edgar had sent his half of the team to wait, concealed, until Courtroom One could be officially opened by the security detail, while Edgar himself had Polyjuiced back into Butts and hurried to the meeting site, where he'd gotten confirmation that Yap and another member of their team, Auror Sheridan Conner, were in on it. The last move before the operation would be in action was to ensure that Yap didn't notice Edgar's half of the team sneaking into the courtroom with them, but that had by comparison been the easiest part of the whole thing.

So far, the older members of Moody's team were far too focused on doing their jobs to be questioning how this all could've been put together on _such_ short notice, while the younger members (Moody's team had three Junior Aurors and one Trainee at the moment) were still too much under the influence of the morning activities to question things. But one of Edgar's main priorities now, as the coordinator of the clean-up, was to ensure that what he and Moody had done off-the-books actually stayed off-the-books, not only because it might jeopardise the investigation, but also to protect Dumbledore and his Order of the Phoenix.

On that front, at least, there wasn't much to be done – Butts' arrest time had to be fudged to coincide with the official beginning of the operation this morning and the Polyjuice use would have to be explained as emergency requisitioning off of another investigation for which the team had been authorised a certain amount of the potion. Moody had only noted which Wizengamot Portkeys had been tampered with, but hadn't collected them or otherwise repaired them, so everything could go through the proper channels on that front, and in any case, when the evidence report from the robes came back, they'd have Dumbledore's target list made an official part of the investigation without any implication of the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot himself.

Beyond that, the Wizengamot members were all safe and accounted for, their robes collected in evidence; the bomb squad had managed to dismantle the runes in Courtroom One and in the process took copious records on what those runes were – Edgar had already assigned further research of this angle to two of his team members, and was fully expecting them to report on the triggering incantation of the runes, which should match what Yap had been allowed to say before Edgar had disabled him; Haig, Moors, Butts and Yap, along with the two Aurors who'd taken the day off, Eifion and Ellsworth, were in interrogation at the moment, Moody supervising the interviews and those primary reports would be in by the end of the day, latest tomorrow; the autopsies on Stern and Conner would be done in a couple of days, though Edgar doubted there'd be anything new to be discovered there; and the team members were busily at work, digging through all known associates of the arrested individuals, subtly steered by Edgar in the direction of any possible connections to Lord Voldemort or the Death Eater group in general. That last bit was now the most crucial one, and it had to be handled delicately, as it was the last tangible connection to the early unauthorised work that Edgar and Moony had done.

When he could take five minutes to himself, Edgar would acknowledge how thrilling it was, to be heading something of this size. In his twelve years with the Auror corps, including his Auror Training years, the largest investigation that Edgar had spearheaded himself had included two other members of the team, and while it had certainly won him points with Moody, it hadn't gotten him anything close to the recognition that this investigation would. More than that, though, being put second-in-command of the whole team by Moody very firmly demonstrated the older man's trust in Edgar's abilities, and this was already netting him respect from his team members, respect that he held very dear. They were on the large side for an Auror team, numbering eleven people with Mad-Eye Moody himself, and that had often resulted in some professional tensions and internal competitiveness. Edgar had never enjoyed that aspect of the job, and he hoped that once the situation had calmed down a bit, the respect wouldn't sour into resentfulness in the older members of the team, though that possibility didn't detract from the quiet pleasure he was finding in the situation.

He was just finishing with his late-afternoon coffee break when Moody found his way into the conference room in the company of Trainee Hideo Kimura, who was laden with some six or seven folders stacked one on top of one other.

"What've you got so far, Bones?" Moody asked gruffly, lowering himself into a chair and turning to study the board in the corner where all the crucial information had been hung up.

"Reports are starting to trickle in; I'm expecting the evidence analysis of the Wizengamot robes any minute now."

"Kimura, give that stack to Bones and go check if Evidence has sent anything over yet," their boss barked at the poor Trainee, who looked, in addition to pale and exhausted from his earlier injury, also more than a little overwhelmed by everything. As he scurried out of the room, Edgar flipped open the first folder and skimmed through the contents – interview transcript with Haig.

"Haig and Moors are clean," Moody informed him in the meantime, "collateral damage, seems like. They need to be released by the end of the day. Ellsworth and Eifion are keeping their mouths shut, but I'd say they were opportunistic supporters rather than active participants. They'll probably be charged with accessory to the attempted crime. It'll depend on whether they open their gobs by the end or not. Submit the request for Veritaserum use on Yap and Butts, those two we know were central players. We're not getting anything out of them otherwise."

"Anti-interrogation training," Edgar agreed, placing Haig's interview folder to the side and opening Moors'. He took a look around the room and surreptitiously cast a privacy spell so that the two Aurors on the other side of the room wouldn't be able to overhear their conversation. "What about the list of potential replacements that we've gotten for the targeted Wizengamot members? Might be worth keeping them under surveillance."

"Can't be brought into the investigation officially, but there will be other ways of adding them to the list of suspected supporters."

"It will take a few days, though, and by now, Voldemort will have heard that it's not gone according to plan, as will they have, no doubt. If we were to trail them now, we'd be more likely to get useful intel."

Moody ground his clenched teeth thoughtfully as he considered, lower jaw moving this way and that as he did so.

"Might be able to assign someone to at least one or two for a couple of days."

"Do you think Yap is a Death Eater?" Edgar asked slowly, his thoughts finally circling back to the one discrepancy they'd discovered last night after Stern's midnight excursion to the Wizengamot cloakroom, and which they'd not really had time to properly consider as yet. "Because if he is, then changing the targets of the assassination attempt from Lord Voldemort's seems like rather a suicidal move, I'd say."

"That is only if Dumbledore's information is correct," Moody reminded him.

"Still, it's seven names more, and two missing. That's a lot."

Dumbledore had only managed to provide them with a list of most likely targets about a week ago, and they'd debated back and forth between each other on it, especially Arcturus Black and Gopal Chaudry, the two conservative Wizengamot members who didn't fit the pattern of the other five. To discover during their surveillance last night that instead of the seven names provided, Stern had instead targeted the five progressives from the list and an additional _seven_ other progressives, whilst not touching the two conservative ones – that had been more than a bit surprising. Moody was leaning towards Dumbledore having gotten bad information from his sources; Edgar, having somewhat more confidence in Dumbledore, was falling on the side of Yap deciding to change the list he'd been given.

"Yap doesn't fit the terrorist profile," Moody noted, digging Yap's folder out of a separate pile on the table to leaf through his work experience. "Prime example of the target for the legislation change that's been clogging us up in the Office for the last months. Not the type who'd want government overthrow."

"But Voldemort's organisation isn't only attracting people with terrorist leanings; a lot of the high-society Pure-bloods rumoured to be supporting him see him as a legitimate political player."

Moody grunted. "Damn him and his games anyway. That set of legislation Dumbledore claims he pushed through to cause unrest has left us in too much of a bloody disarray even without blasted fools like Yap using it to sabotage us from the inside out. Do you know how much trust our department will have with the Minister and the Wizengamot after this? Damn him to hell and back!"

"And with the budget negotiations for the DMLE starting up with the new session, too," Edgar agreed morosely. "I've been talking to Dempsey, from the Office of Misinformation – he's afraid their funding will be cut significantly, and then their investigations will fall on us whether we've got the capacity to handle them or not. Which we already don't, though with this new legislation about mixed-jurisdiction crimes, all their cases will suddenly get a much higher profile. He's certainly done a good one on us, hasn't he, and the damned Wizengamot is too blind to see it."

"It's cause they've not moved their arses out of their gilded chairs in decades. Lazy, self-entitled fools who wouldn't know vigilance if it would save their lives. Which it did, mind you, thanks to you and Dumbledore."

"You too, though. I'd not have known whom else to take this to if you hadn't taken me seriously."

Moody nodded, turning towards the door as it opened, while Edgar brought down the privacy wards around them; Kimura was back with the evidence folder, which Edgar accepted and opened to skim through.

"Bloody hell," Edgar exclaimed, starting in his chair. In the open folder before him, the evidence report on the Wizengamot robes listed the seven Portkeys that were found to have been tampered with: seven Portkeys belonging to the seven members of the Wizengamot whose names Dumbledore had provided them with, and certainly not the twelve that Moody had personally witnessed being tampered with.

He and Moody locked eyes, the shared realisation coming to them in the same moment – someone else out there had gotten to the evidence between this morning and now, and had tampered with it. _Someone else was out there, attempting to influence their investigation away from the truth_.

"Boss! Boss, quick!" Jalali's sharply-pitched voice rang out from outside the door. Her brown skin had an ashen pallor to it when she burst through the door, and her glossy hair was in disarray, falling out of its tie. Her brown eyes were blown wide with shock and urgency. "Butts and Yap are dead!"

* * *

**Augustus had downed** a questionable potion – a highly addictive pain suppressant that worked wonders for about twenty minutes and then made you feel all the pain it had allayed in addition to the one you were already under – in order to be able to move as he ordinarily would despite the pains that permeated every fiber of his being. The Dark Lord's anger had been much abated by Augustus' measures to contain the damages of his plan's failure, and Augustus had been deemed fit to resume his normal duties within the Ministry immediately thereafter. In the privacy of the Department of Mystery, he would be able to lie in a heap on the floor without anyone being any the wiser, of course, and Augustus intended to do something quite like that as soon as he was ensconced in his own office – if his place of work within the Department could be named as such.

Augustus, of course, had not been the only person to suffer at the hands of his Master, nor, indeed, the one who had most been assaulted by the Cruciatus and some other curses amongst his Master's favourites. Unlike the others who had failed, Augustus had had the privilege of having devised a perfect solution for the very end he had not hoped would be reached. And (Augustus was unable not to shiver at the thought), he had taken measures to ensure no one would be able to speak a word of what had happened: Butts, Conner, Stern and Yap were no more.

He hadn't allowed himself to react to his actions the previous evening, for soon after the deed had been accomplished, he had presented himself to his Master, but part of the vomit he had lain in at the Dark Lord's feet in consequence of the man's anger had been a reaction to the feeling of emptiness that followed whenever he need make use of the Killing Curse. Indeed, the effects were so destructive upon him that even the pain he so enjoyed of the suffering imparted on him by his Master was not to be borne; there was only the languishing of losing part of himself that could never be recovered. And to have struck twice in a single evening had aggravated the state of his soul more than he had anticipated.

With his mind set to that anger and the disappointment that had come in the wake of the revelation of his failure, Augustus now took upon himself the next task that naturally stemmed from his failure.

His fellow Unspeakables were, as ever, hard at work, taking pains not to die in pursuit of the greatest mysteries of magic. Augustus sometimes wondered, when he observed them, whether he should have been content leading a life such as those they conducted. Knowledge was his ultimate goal, always, and indeed he had gained much of it in the service of Lord Voldemort. Yet, these wizards and witches who worked with him and lived their lives both with careless abandon and shrewd mastery, did they not gain knowledge every day, knowledge even beyond that of Augustus' Master? Augustus' life had ever been driven by a madness of its own kind, he knew, and at the edge of what he surely perceived to be the greatest war Wizarding Britain had ever experienced, he had to wonder whether his single-minded pursuit of the power of knowledge had not led him the furthest from true knowledge.

He scoffed. Philosophical meanderings were not going to help his present predicament. Nor, indeed, would they sate his devious curiosity.

With a list of names ensconced within the folds of his work-robes, Augustus headed for the Hall of Prophecy. He had idled a lot in the past days, and his absence the previous afternoon might have not been remarked upon, but that didn't necessarily mean that it had gone unnoticed. Actually moving around and doing something which might look productive was not an altogether bad idea.

Still, his main concern had to lie elsewhere. There was no doubt in his mind that there had been a leak, be it voluntary or accidental, and that had brought on the dissolution of all their carefully-crafted plans. The Dark Lord had given him an order – to find the person responsible for the leak. There was no doubt in Augustus' mind that failure to produce the correct result in this task would signify his demise. His Master had been willing to give him a chance to redeem himself, but there had been a threat in his every word, as he had indicated to Augustus what needed to be done. And though Augustus had wanted to find the reason behind his failure already on his own, it was no small weight upon his shoulders to know that this was no longer his own expectations but his Master's will.

Being in this gigantic room, with scores of crystal balls from the height of his feet to the ceiling far above where his own sight failed him, brought him closer to relaxation than he thought possible under the circumstances. His Master had an obsession with seers, prophecies and the likes – though to Augustus' knowledge never a seer had been consulted by the Dark Lord. It was as though the great wizard somehow wished to know about his future and the grandness of it, but was... not _scared_ – for Lord Voldemort was never afraid – but _anxious_ about the results that consultations with a seer might bring. And yet Augustus knew of the unfixed nature of predictions; he knew that thousands of those crystal balls contained prophecies unfulfilled and that many added to that score on a daily basis. That was a mystery Augustus would dearly like to solve; not as much the predictability of the future, but rather his Master's obsession with succumbing to something that no art could truly master. For all his curiosity, however, he could not truly spend time ruminating. Indeed, the time he was already dedicating to feigning interest in his work was greatly reducing his abilities to mind his true business of the day.

He hid himself in one of the middle-most rows and took out his list. Some of the people on it he discarded for later examination, for he didn't believe they would have had the chance to thwart his plan quite so completely and effectively for time-constraints – he was not assuming fealty from any of the subjects on the list. He allowed himself to bite his lower lip, a nervous habit in which he indulged only when assured of being completely alone. He could not truly follow the list with no other guidance than timing, for those who remained were not few and it would take too much time to analyse their plausible unreliability. No, he needed something else. Information had always been his ally, and Augustus resolved to make use of it once more.

And for a man such as him, gathering information was not such a chore. Most of what he sought he actually already possessed, all that was left for him to do was to complete a jigsaw puzzle, and hunt for those pieces of it he was missing to form the full picture, to see the pieces come together until they would tell him their story.

It was a long day of mental labour, one which his colleagues could not suspect him for. Augustus had learnt their ways and characters as well he could, though he had found them to be quite different from other people and assuredly more trustworthy than anyone else. Indeed, the more he managed to get through their shields and learn of their personalities, the more he was astounded at his ability to have breached their ranks and number amongst them. His diligence and seemingly hard-working attitude actually appeared to ingratiate him to some of his fellow colleagues, who sent him what – for them – equalled to encouragement. Indeed, Augustus had spent most of his day scribbling, as though producing research on some item of hidden wizardry with a productivity rarely seen within the darkened halls. Too much mystery surrounded these branches of magic for anyone to ever produce much on them, but Augustus had set theories aside for just such occasions, when he knew his ability to actually work for his wage would be greatly hindered by his vocational aspirations within the Dark Lord's ranks. He would need to work more on one of those theories in his own time at home, and forego sleep for a couple of days, but all in all he thought he could produce an intriguing theory on the working of prophecies within the week.

And at the end of a tiresome day, Augustus didn't have any form of solid evidence in his hands, and though he knew that the naming of a culprit would be more than enough to convince the Dark Lord to act in retribution, Augustus would not be satisfied with anything less than complete understanding and evidence enough to show who else was involved. Augustus knew that a man like Lucas Tannen was not his own man, for Lucas Tannen was not so different from Augustus himself.

Tannen was a fourth-level Death Eater, with his position within the Ministry's archives allowing him little chance to climb the Death Eater ranks, but he was a man who had made himself useful in the service of the Dark Lord, and his position had always appeared providential, but not so much so that Augustus had ever had occasion to question it beyond his normal parameters of always questioning everyone's motivations. But Tannen lacked one thing Augustus did not, apparently, and that was the ability to receive answers to questions he had not asked. And, unfortunately for Tannen, when one asked a question, though that might not be necessarily remembered by those who were asked it, a quick look into their minds would reveal the truth of things. And all that was left for Augustus to do once his day at the Ministry was over was to go to two people – the Death Eater whose brother had been tasked with influencing his Wizengamot member lover; and the one who had, through the Imperius curse, made a nonagenarian wizard kill his wife and then threaten the Wizengamot with retribution – who had known things Tannen should not have been privy to and take from them what he knew they had to offer. That was his evidence.

Now for the motive.

Augustus knew the names of the Aurors who had first attended the scene and though the Dark Lord had no definite proof, there was a suspicion that Edgar Bones' allegiance went beyond the Ministry to Dumbledore. If that were true, then it stood to reason that Dumbledore had had a hand in preventing the attack – even ensconced as he was in attendance of the ICW's meeting, he would not have had any trouble organising his men to thwart this attack with such anticipation, as he would have had ample time to do as much. Something, however, didn't ring true in that conclusion. Despite how much Augustus had now come to distrust Tannen, one thing he had not come to question, and that was whether Tannen was as much convinced of the truth of blood purity and Purebloods' supremacy as the most devout of Lord Voldemort's followers. His well thought-out arguments and intriguing reasonings were more than those of a man trying to ingratiate himself with a group of fanatics. Then, there was no way that Tannen would have gone to Albus Dumbledore to inform him of an imminent take-over of the Wizengamot.

There was only one person who opposed the Dark Lord though he largely agreed with Augustus' Master's idea of blood purity. Orion Black.

It took Augustus all of the following day to find the inkling of the connection there, where none but Augustus would have thought to look. It had seemed a fluke, at the time, nothing the Dark Lord had suspected, and nothing Augustus himself hadn't put down to the shifting mechanics of politics. A vote which would have favoured the Dark Lord but had been thwarted with the use of an arcane by-law which Orion Black and the papers he had produced in the Wizengamot session had quoted as dating back to the late Eighteenth Century, and which had been applied a redoutable total of three times in the history of the Wizengamot up to that point. The sharp intellect and knowledge of Orion Black was such a renowned fact that no one could have doubted that Orion had produced that one piece of previous legislation out of his own repertoire. But Orion's name was not in the archives, whereas Lucas Tannen _worked_ there. And suddenly the chance Augustus had never trusted became traitorous cunning, something he was much more familiar with. For the first time since the plan had failed, Augustus felt a pervasive thrill that had nothing to do with disappointment or pain and the underlying feeling of failure he never could stomach.

It was one single instance that demonstrated Tannen's connection with the head of the most influential family in the whole of Wizarding Britain. One which was, luckily enough, provided without need of consultation with Bellatrix Lestrange, whom Augustus liked less than he liked Dumbledore himself. Even as he reported his findings to the Dark Lord, at the end of this second day of research, Augustus didn't censure his thoughts about Bellatrix, knowing his Master cared little whether his minions liked each other, as long as they were amenable to collaboration and faithful to him.

* * *

**In the stillness** of his study, Orion rubbed his fingers thoughtfully against his lips, chapped from his momentary bouts of breathlessness, and thought.

There were three evening newspapers spread out on his desk, and exactly none of them contained a single line of information about the attempted and foiled _coup d'état_ that had taken place earlier in the day. Really, if Orion hadn't lived through it, he wouldn't have even known it had happened in the first place.

In the grand scheme of things, that was for the best.

He'd almost taken his Wizengamot hat off to Dumbledore, when all had been said and done, and the MWs had been freed to find their ways back home. They'd been shuffled about in that usual overprotective way of the Auror Office's Wizengamot Security Detail, five by five, down the lift and to the courtroom of the day, herded like a flock of geese, an Auror guarding above, an Auror escorting the lift, an Auror guarding below in the corridor, two Aurors at the door, and an Auror waiting in the room itself. And when the time to strike had come, there hadn't been even a twitch, really, just a flash of red light through the chamber itself and another four Aurors revealing themselves hidden under invisibility cloaks, three moving to apprehend their Auror guard, one instructing them in a calm, even tone to 'please leave your robes at your seats and take these Portkeys, there is nothing to be concerned about, we have had a warning of a potential security breach, everything is under control'.

They'd been cursorily interviewed – not even questioned – and information had trickled down through the group, of course, of two MWs being taken hostage up above, coming through with minor injuries, of two dead Aurors and another six, then one more in the late afternoon, in custody, of runes placed near the ceiling around the courtroom, of speculation over faulty Wizengamot Portkeys and whether all this was deliberate and by whom.

Orion had known, of course, that he'd be in danger if he went to the Wizengamot meeting today. But he'd known, too, two other things: if Dumbledore had done his job right and Orion hadn't shown up, Voldemort's suspicion would've fallen on him; equally so, if Dumbledore hadn't done his job right and Orion had still shown up, he would've been safe, because Voldemort would've had far more to lose than to gain by removing him from the Wizengamot.

(The same had not been true of his father, it seemed, but then Orion hadn't suffered Acturus to be present at any _truly_ important votes in years, so he'd not feared for the old man's safety either; foolish of Voldemort to miss that little bit of information, really).

The thought of the stress impacting his disrupted health hadn't crossed his mind except in the lightest of manners, there and discarded, discarded like his plans for his family's future, like his ambitions and expectations of his worthless eldest son, like his worries over Regulus' weaknesses and potential failures.

What was left was just the one thing, to be done with the whole business.

When the fire crackling merrily in the fireplace turned green and allowed Lucas Tannen to step out, Orion placed a marker in the spine of his book and laid it on his desk.

"I assume you have heard."

"I did, yes," Tannen confirmed, sitting down in the chair as Orion stood up to pour him a glass of Firewhiskey. The man accepted it gratefully, sipping at it as he gave his report of the afternoon's activities, the details he'd managed to extract from his connections in Evidence, the identity of the investigative team assigned to the case, the rumours that had already spread among those few in the know at the Ministry.

By the time he'd finished, the man was slurring lightly and listing to one side. And at that point, it was as easy as one whispered word, one twirl of his wand, to begin sorting out the business of loose ends.

Mutamency was a Dark Mind Art for a very good reason – going into someone's mind, hunting down memories and thoughts and feelings, changing them, all of that was child's play, in a way, intrusive and defiling, and yet oh-so-innocent, giving Legilimency a dark slant that was only truly appreciated when in the hands of someone as ruthless and uncaring of other humans as Voldemrot; but digging into the depths of another's psyche, finding their core experiences and values, instincts and urges, and then erasing them, replacing them, rewriting them until the person wasn't the same person anymore, it was a level of monstrousness that not many would even think to reach for, let alone perfect. And yet it was a Mind Art, a skill one could learn, and Orion had mastered it nearly two decades ago.

With the spiked liquor and an added dose of the Confundus Charm to ease the way, Orion slipped his way into Tannen's mind, past all the information the man had shared still crowding the surface of his thoughts, and then plunged deeper, into the subconscious mind, and cast the Mutamency spell that'd open it to his manipulations.

More was the pity, really, that Orion was forced to this step; Tannen had been a useful informant, straightforward in his reporting and reliable in fulfilling any requests given. But foiling this failed coup of Voldemort's was far too large an action in itself to ever risk using Tannen again in such a position. Valuable though he'd been in the past, Orion had known he'd be forced to sacrifice the man the moment he'd made the decision to take Tannen's knowledge to Dumbledore.

Tannen's position in Voldemort's organisation was one in the group of Death Eaters who _were_ full-fledged members of the man's organisation, and yet were not so important as to deserve being Marked. As such, changing the man's memories would never be enough in itself, because all it would take for Voldemort to discover his connection to Orion would be to Legilimise him. If even a fraction of the rumours regarding Voldemort's mastery of that Mind Art were true, he'd sniff out modified memories in a heartbeat.

No, the only way to do so was to fundamentally erase Orion out of Tannen's memories – and yet, those very holes would tell their own story, a story which someone clever enough or ruthless enough would uncover. Which meant that something else must stand in place of those holes, and by far the most straightforward person for that would be Dumbledore.

Unfortunately, like many in the current political climate, Tannen was of that breed of man who'd rather spit on Dumbledore's extended hand and let the world burn, than accept it when it was the very last resort available to him. Replacing himself in Tannen's memories with Dumbledore would therefore certainly end up with enough internal paradox so as to either cause Tannen to reject the change, or be extremely obvious to any Legilimens peeking in. So Orion was left with no choice but to dig deep into the root of the man's beliefs and stances, biases and blind spots, and change them.

It was gruelling work, and one that certainly required finesse and patience. Orion began by systematically marking every single memory the man had of himself, and once he'd done that, used the justifications that the man had made to give the reason for working with Orion as a guide deep into his psyche, where he could find the man's motivations. He was careful not to change them drastically – after all, there'd been a reason why the man had sought out the Death Eaters in the first place – but he did soften the man's stances on blood purity, as well as shifted his belief from absolute superiority of the Pure-bloods (which had given the man's loyalty to Orion over Voldemort) to the belief in Pure-blood dominance within the established system. He prodded and quenched any errant extreme feelings of disgust or revulsion towards Muggle-lovers, and chased down any childhood memories that could contradict all of this, summarily erasing them so that they'd not create self-doubt. Then he went back to all the memories of himself and modified them, exchanging the surroundings of his office with that of Dumbledore's in addition to the figure of himself with the old wizard.

Fixing up the initial meetings between himself and the man was the most involved part of this, because they needed to be perfect, and once he'd completed them, he went down the association pathways in the man's mind and gave them kicks so as to see where the man's pliable mind would take him, catching a few more bits that needed some modification. He completed the whole thing with the Mindsetting Spell, the final and absolutely crucial part of any Mutamency practice, whose purpose was to short-circuit and restart the target's brain chemistry so that the changes would become part of the mind itself. Without any embedded anchors or triggers, the changes would not be in any way removable as of this point on.

It took him almost three hours to complete this, and by the time he was done, Orion's heart was skipping beats and his chest was tight enough he had to pant for each breath, leaving him thinking that it was a good thing he didn't have any Wizengamot sittings tomorrow; he was going to be spending the day in a reclined position, he could already feel it, damned be his compromised health.

Opening his drawer, Orion pulled out the vial of his antiarrhythmic potion and downed it, then leaned back in his chair and waited until his unruly heart was back in its proper rhythm to call for Kreacher. The house-elf popped in with a deep bow, giving Orion a slightly worried look but keeping his mouth shut on whatever thoughts he had regarding Orion's appearance.

"Take him to an alley behind a wizarding pub and ensure that he'd be unnoticed there until he wakes up," he instructed the house-elf with a wave of his head towards the unconscious man. "Speak of this to no one, now or in the future."

"Yes, Master," Kreacher said and, with another bow from the waist, grabbed the man by the arm and Disapparated them both out.

That taken care of, Orion gathered his flagging strength, extinguished the fire in his hearth and warded it fully closed, and then made the trip to his bedroom, where he barely managed to exchange his robes for a nightshirt before finally allowing the day to catch up with him and drive him into dark, dreamless sleep.

* * *

**"So, what** you're telling me is that there's a greater conspiracy at work, and we have absolutely nothing legally admissible to demonstrate this fact?" Lobelia Moody said in a harsh, gravelly voice that Edgar had heard was the consequence of a war wound sustained during Grindelwald's conflict three decades back. The woman herself was pushing ninety or so in his judgment, her hair steel grey and the skin of her neck sagging, but her physique was toned and her stamina, both for bureaucratic bullshit and for actual law enforcement, was as strong as it had been when she'd first taken over the position of the Head of the Auror Office some twenty years ago. Moody didn't favour her in his looks, though it was hard to say given their respective scars and disfigurements – Lobelia Moody was missing an ear and had a burn scar running that side of her jaw, too.

Stamina or no, though, she sounded beyond exasperated with Edgar and Mad-Eye in that moment.

"Bugger legalities, ma'am; this was Lord Voldemort attempting to take over the blasted Ministry from the inside-out!"

"I cannot, in fact, bugger the legalities, Alastor," she shot back, eyes flashing, "because legalities are what _I_ deal with, even if you do not. Even if I were to believe you that this was a – what, an attempted coup? – all you've got is illegally obtained memory of a list of twelve Portkeys tampered with, Portkeys which you then _left_ dysfunctional so as to cut corners and hit on the easiest way of apprehending the suspects – suspects which are now _dead_ – only to then have the evidence come back from those Portkeys with seven, rather than twelve, and only five matching your illegally obtained list. And you expect me to take this up to Crouch? He'd shred me into ribbons!"

"We do have Madoc Priddy going into the evidence lockup during the time window, ma'am," Edgar spoke up, voice softer than his two growling superiors, "and he's the one who pushed through the whole idea of the Portkeys in the first place. With Yap's help, granted, but Priddy's the brains behind that part of the operation, and their whole plan hinges on it."

"Yes," Head Auror Moody agreed, shuffling papers on her desk until she found the one she'd been looking for and putting on her reading glasses to read verbatim from it, "and according to your team's report, and I quote, _the suspect maintains that he was working on his own under the direction of Senior Auror Alastor Moody and that he was collecting evidence in the case. When probed, he submitted memories of the event as evidence, which corroborate his stated sequence of events._"

"Forensics of those memories show he's been Confunded and probably also Imperiused."

"They show that the memories aren't fully trustworthy, which certainly implies the use of the Confundus Charm, but it doesn't irrevocably prove it," Head Auror Moody rebutted her son's point. "It could just as easily be that he got drunk on the job and thought to pull a stupid stunt."

The worst thing was, the woman was right – it was notoriously difficult to evaluate unreliable memories for the cause of that unreliableness, and the fact that the man had invoked Moody's name, of all the Aurors in the corps, certainly lent credence to Lobelia Moody's point.

"And we can't prove that he did anything with the actual Portkeys while in the evidence lockup, just that he was present there for about half an hour; he could've taken a bit of a nap in one of the out-of-the-way shelves, for all we know."

"What about the names of the targeted MWs, then?" Edgar asked.

Head Auror Moody sighed, rubbing her eyes with her fingers for a moment. "Look, Alastor, Bones, I don't disbelieve you that this has to do with bloody Voldemort. The man's been a thorn in our side for going on seven years now, and I can smell blood in the air as well as any other veteran of Grindelwald's war. But I can only work with the evidence before me. The two lists you brought me tell two very different stories, and the one _on my desk_ tells me that the dysfunctional Portkeys don't have a discernible pattern easily attributed to the Death Eater organisation. Now, we can put together from the rigging of Courtroom One and Aloysius Yap's aborted spellwork that this dysfunctionality of the Portkeys was deliberate rather than accidental, and the spot check on the Portkeys that you demanded for three days ago certainly goes towards this evidence, but it seems that only Yap and potentially the other three dead members of his conspiracy were aware of the targets and might have been able to contradict the list, if you'd done your jobs properly and kept them alive. Nowhere in any of the substantial evidence you managed to collect in one day," and here she gave them a wrathful, displeased look of someone who knew that her minions had been doing things they shouldn't but couldn't punish them for it, "do these other seven names pop up."

"Priddy might have them, but without a way to rebut his version of events, we can't get them out of him," Edgar noted. "And we can't rebut his version of events without you approving our request to use Veritaserum on him, or to at least bring in mind healers who can tell us if his mind's been tampered with."

"For which I have no legal basis, because his memories match his testimony. If there's any other way you can bring this discrepancy of the tampered Portkeys into the investigation, then I can authorise it, but without justifiable outside cause, you can forget it. You also have nothing on Butts' and Yap's deaths beyond a post-mortem that states their hearts stopped, which certainly implies the Killing Curse but doesn't prove it beyond reasonable doubt, given the list of potions and poisons that can induce the same effects that they could've taken on their own and no evidence whatsoever that anyone had been in their holding cells at any point since their arrests. The case, as it stands now, shows seven Aurors deciding to go rogue, if we count in Priddy, Ellsworth and Eifion, and all indications that someone else was pulling their strings is circumstantial, predicated on suspect evidence and evidence that's not admissible in a court where a third of the potential presiding judges will be Voldemort's supporters anyway. If you want us to be able to go after him based on this mess, then we need something they cannot write off out of hand, and currently, we don't have anything like that."

"Which is why we need _you_, ma'am, to give us more leeway to run with these strings in the investigation!" Moody demanded, banging his hand against the surface of her desk in emphasis. "Packaging the thing for the Wizengamot is a matter of wordplay when we have the actual evidence."

"As if this investigation hasn't already had its share of fudging facts and twisting truths!" Head Auror Moody scoffed. "And you still haven't told me how you even stumbled onto this mess in the first place. Off the record, Alastor, you know I know your excuse yesterday morning was complete bullshit."

"Anonymous tipoff," Moody replied gruffly. "I am not going to reveal my confidential sources to you."

"See, that's what I'm talking about! If we can't verify where your original information came from – and no doubt this is why you're so convinced of the connection to Voldemort – then none of the information you gathered from that tipoff is usable to me."

"Is there any way to get authorisation to use the Veritaserum on Priddy? Any way _at all_?" Edgar asked, as clearly, this sort of circular argument was getting them nowhere. They couldn't implicate Dumbledore as their source of the tipoff, and they couldn't use Moody's memory of Stern's actions on the night of the 21st without revealing that there'd _been_ a tipoff, which might then be traced back to Edgar's membership with the Order of the Phoenix. And without _that_, there was no way to prove there was something larger at work other than Priddy, who was the lynchpin they'd dug up when they started looking into the matter of the changed Portkey evidence. Yap's and Butts' deaths were a dead-end, as the woman had said, and there was no other evidence in any of the dead Aurors' pasts to indicate anything other than a self-contained conspiracy. Even Eifion and Ellsworth fit into it rather neatly; only Priddy was the loose card, and if they could just tug on it, they could bring the whole damned house down.

But Priddy had either been properly instructed during his Imperiused state – Edgar and Moody agreed that he'd been Imperiused and Confunded, that was quite obvious, he certainly didn't seem like he properly understood his own role within this whole mess to begin with – or else he was just very good at covering his own arse now he saw what sort of shite he'd been dropped in, because he was boxing them in by seemingly being perfectly cooperative. The difference between these two scenarios would tell them whether he'd been a willing participant or not, but there was no way to tell that difference, not without getting him to speak unredacted truth, and for that, they needed the Veritaserum.

"Only option I can see is to chuck this up the chain of command," Head Auror Moody said with a shrug. "If you boys want, we'll bring Crouch in on this and see what he says, but you're taking full responsibility for it with him."

What Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement and Lobelia Moody's direct boss, had to say, was, in essence, the same thing as Lobelia Moody herself.

"I agree that there are some worrying open questions," Crouch said once he'd gone through the evidence summary and listened to their reports. "Biggest one being why would Priddy have gone back in to do anything with the Portkeys at all, unless the Wizengamot members we were supposed to find dead in the explosion didn't match the Portkeys that were tampered with and that we would have found if you'd not managed to foil the attack? But with Priddy cooperating and giving no indication that there is someone else pulling his strings, there is no probable cause to use the Veritaserum on him. As a Member of the Wizengamot, I can also tell you that any of the justices you go to for this request would turn it down. There is one other option," he allowed, tapping a finger against his lips for a moment, before he nodded sharply. "Yes, this definitely needs to be cleared up, so if we cannot go through legal channels, we'll have to go by executive decree."

"Sir?" Edgar asked.

"Head Auror Moody, Senior Auror Moody and I will speak with Minister Minchum. The Minister for Magic has the executive power to authorise the Veritaserum use in cases when he feels it merited. Auror Bones, you are dismissed."

So Edgar had no choice but to leave them to it. He headed instead back to the conference room where the full case was still being put together; now that all the urgency of the previous day had waned, the rest of the team was back to working in shifts, and the room was unoccupied at the moment. With a heavy sigh, Edgar dropped himself into one of the uncomfortable chairs and rubbed his hands over his face.

He wished that Dumbledore would come back from his conference already; he felt somehow certain that the old wizard would have a solution to their problem, or at the very least, if he didn't, then he'd be able to assure Edgar that their actions so far had born concrete fruit and were enough for him – that the attempted coup had been foiled, that they now had a list of seven to fourteen MWs who needed closer protection, that they had a list of seven potential new MWs who were Voldemort's supporters.

What they didn't have were Voldemort's operatives within the Ministry, the ones who had somehow managed to assassinate two prisoners, Aurors at that, without leaving a trace of themselves anywhere, the ones who had gotten away with using the Imperius Curse within the Ministry with no one the wiser, the ones who had somehow managed to manipulate Yap into doing the whole blasted thing without probably even realising he was being manipulated.

It was a humanoid shadow, and it was slipping through their fingers like the air that shadows always were, and they were going to lose them, Edgar could _taste_ it. His disillusionment with their criminal justice system was something he'd come to terms with a while ago, but that didn't mean it didn't sting anew every time he was confronted with it.

If only the Minister would allow them to question Priddy properly, they'd still have a shot at catching Voldemort's operatives and blowing the case wide open to expose that megalomaniac for what he was truly playing at.

By the time Moody returned to the conference room, it was going on half-ten, and one look at him told Edgar everything he needed to know.

"He refused! Point-blank refused!" the craggy man exclaimed, kicking a chair viciously. He looked _furious_. "And the worst thing, Bones, wanna know the worst thing? The _worst thing_ was that he _knew_ we were right! I looked him in the eye and I saw that he believed us Voldemort was behind this! And he refused us the only way to connect Voldemort with this attempted coup because he didn't _want _us to connect it!"

"What?" Edgar asked, baffled. "But why not? He built his whole platform on being tough about Voldemort's brand of extremism."

"Because we were _literally_ half a spell away from it happening," Moody said with a sneer. "And if we did, and it got out that Voldemort came _that close_ to overthrowing the government and instituting himself as the shadow ruler of the whole bloody Wizarding Britain, where would that leave Minchum? He got his position because Jenkins was booted out with a vote of no-confidence. And damn him to seven hells and back, he is a blasted politician, and like all blasted politicians, all he's looking to is covering his own arse!"

Exhausting the contents of his rant, Moody grabbed hold of the chair next to Edgar, flipping it around and seating himself on it such that he could lean against the backrest with his folded arms.

"I've had enough of this," the older man said gruffly, sharply. "Bones, as soon as Albus Dumbledore's back from his frolic to the other side of the globe, you're going to take me to him, and he and I are going to have a proper chat about this secret militant organisation he's got cooked up off the books."

Edgar found himself so flabbergasted by the order that he needed nearly two minutes to process it properly – Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody, Mr Law-and-Order himself, was going rogue.

The Ministry had no clue what sort of asset they'd just lost themselves, but Edgar had a feeling Dumbledore sure would know its value in comparison.

* * *

**A/N:** The title of Part 4 (rather appropriately) comes from the quote by the old bulldog of World War II himself,  
Winston Churchill:

"**Success is not final, failure is not fatal**: it is the courage to continue that counts."

* * *

Almost over, folks - one last chapter remaining, something of an 'epilogue' that will tie this story back into PNT, and hopefully one that everyone will enjoy for the guest star of it, too! In addition, we're leaving our writers' commentary for the very end, as well, so you'll get to hear a bit about our writing process and more.


	7. Cunning Passages, Contrives Corridors P5

**Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors**  
**(and Issues)**

**Part 5**  
**Towards the Arabian Mate  
**

**In truth, **Lucius hadn't quite known what to expect when his Dark Mark had begun burning, mid-way through dinner with Narcissa and his parents. He'd excused himself instantly, to cloak and mask himself, and had let the Dark Mark guide his Apparition here. Where here was, he rarely knew – the Dark Lord had several strongholds, but they were Unplottable, and one never knew which of them the Dark Lord was currently residing in. It was a familiar location, however, one he'd been in previously, and so he took his walk to the admittance room with confidence, though beneath his heart was hammering in almost terrified excitement.

It felt different, this night, felt dangerous in some undefined way, and Lucius held a hidden hope that it would mean a grand task for him, a glory beyond any possible to achieve with the tasks he'd been set thus far by his Master.

Other members of their movement were in the room when he entered it, in a semi-circle facing their Master's seat, and one of the masked Death Eaters was to the Dark Lord's right-hand side. The number of the members, though, oh that drove an expectant thrill of terror into Lucius' heart, because it was five cloaked figures discounting the one by the Dark Lord's side, and there was only one group of five – once six, until two years ago – within their movement: _the_ group, the oldest, most trusted of the Dark Lord's associates, his contemporaries, his innermost circle.

If he had been summoned to stand before _them_, then this was the moment Lucius had been anticipating for _years_, the moment when he'd be given the one task that would elevate him to the second circle of the Dark Lord's followers, when he'd be given a chance to prove himself as one of his most trustworthy.

"Lucius, you've finally found time to join us," the Dark Lord said in his velvety voice that always tugged on Lucius as if there was magic itself imbued within it.

"My deepest apologies, my Lord," Lucius said, stepping up to bow on one knee before his Master. Part of him quivered at the words themselves, the implication that he was _late_, but the rest of him felt on tenterhooks, eager and yearning for what he half-knew was coming. "I came as quickly as I could."

"Of course you did; just as I would expect of my loyal follower," the Dark Lord agreed. "Do rise; there's a lot to discuss."

So he did, standing up and shuffling back towards his fellow Death Eaters, though there was no space in this circle for him, which meant that he was supposed to be separated from them, to stand before their Master and accept the task that was about to be given to him.

It was almost nerve-racking, to know that this was a task important enough to bring about _this_ circle of Death Eaters, and Lucius held his eyes deferentially lowered somewhere near his Master's feet, because he dared not look up and meet those piercing dark eyes that flashed red in the dim lights.

"Do you know why we've gathered here today, Lucius?" the Dark Lord asked, waving his hand through the air and bringing it to curl before him, elbow resting on the handrest of his throne-like chair.

"I... cannot begin to guess, my Lord."

"Can you not? I must admit, I was so certain your father would've mentioned the exciting events of this week to his family. But perhaps he did not find it so remarkable an experience, to brush so closely to death and survive only by the grace of the illustrious Aurors of the Ministry."

Lucius winced at his own idiocy, hurrying to incline his head, even as he wondered at what it meant that the Dark Lord was opening with this topic.

"He has mentioned the event you speak of, my Lord, yes," he confirmed. "He... didn't really relay it in such a manner."

"In which manner did he relay it?"

"He deemed it theatrics meant to artificially boost trust in the Auror Office and the Minister's new regulations, and a stunt to attempt to place blame on you, my Lord. A stunt that failed, incidentally, since it seems it's the Auror Office itself that will be shouldering the blame," he added with disgust at the incompetence this idea implied.

"Hm. Yes, a rational conclusion that a staunch supporter to our cause such as Abraxas Malfoy would have been able to come to, given his limited information. Well, Lucius, we are here today so that we may discuss the _true_ facts of this event, not the internal propaganda that this upstart Minister has seen fit to sell to the Wizengamot." The Dark Lord straightened out of his slouch, leaning on his elbowed hand with his chin and giving Lucius a piercing look with those chilling dark eyes that could see into one's very soul; Lucius jerkily lowered his gaze down. "_You_ know better than your father. Don't you, Lucius?"

"I..." Lucius began, licking his lips as he parsed out the best words; the Dark Lord's moods could be a mite unpredictable of late, and it paid to be cautious in one's approach to him. "I have a different opinion to my father's, my Lord, yes."

"Well, then – let's hear it."

Lucius took a silent breath, his mind making connections even as the Dark Lord spoke his encouragement, putting the disparate pieces together, and fear twisted low in his gut, because he could grasp what it meant, that the Dark Lord was asking this, that he was bringing all this up.

And the Dark Lord's wrath could be a _terrible_ thing to witness.

"I think the Minister is an incompetent buffoon who wouldn't have thought something like this up if his life depended on it, let alone his political position." He couldn't help the sneer from marring his face, his disgust with Harold Minchum easily strong enough to come to the fore whenever he thought of the man. "If it _had_ been a stunt by the Ministry, they would never have blamed the Auror Office for it. And the man leading the investigation is Alastor Moody; he is said to be incorruptible, and would never have agreed to participate in deceiving the public in such a manner. And if it _wasn't_ the Ministry, then..." Lucius took a breath and licked his lips, stomach twisting in sudden anxiety as he realised that the Dark Lord expected him to _voice_ what could very likely provoke him in the extreme. "If it wasn't the Ministry, then this was either truly some rogue Auror group – idiotic to even assume, that office is staffed by nothing but incompetents, and what my father has learned of the story behind the investigation sounds far too brilliant and complex for the likes of _them_ – or it _was _a plot of your making... and someone got in the way."

"Brilliant and complex," the Dark Lord repeated, almost thoughtfully. "Yes, that it was, wasn't it, Scout? And yet _foiled_," he near-hissed, voice rising from calm to furious in moments, "by yes, Lucius, _idiots_ at the Auror office, led by that rabid dog Moody and his eager little puppy Edgar Bones. Ah, but Lord Voldemort has his eyes and ears in that pathetic excuse for a department, and their attempts to hide their sources and their feeble machinations from him are not even _close_ to enough. So let me tell you, Lucius, what those eyes and ears have reported to me, and how this brilliant and complex story has ended up with this _unfortunate_ twist ending."

"Yes, my Lord," Lucius murmured, "if it pleases you."

The Dark Lord stood up, in a sinuous, elegant move, to make a circuit around the room; Lucius kept his figure in the corner of his eyes, tracking his steps, ever watchful as one must be with the Dark Lord, and he felt himself almost shiver as his Master drew nearer.

"This brilliant and complex story begins with a list of witches and wizards whose positions in our governing body had made them... a thorn, shall we say, in Lord Voldemort's side. I decided that it was time these witches and wizards were removed – _permanently_ – and replaced by some more like-minded individuals – like-minded to our cause, of course." He paused a moment, a dose of good humour in his voice when he spoke again to say: "Not to worry, Lucius; your father was never in any danger, because I do not allow anything to happen to those who share in my vision and stand beside me."

"Thank you, my Lord," Lucius said with feeling, a weight off his back at the belated confirmation that his father wasn't on that list of witches and wizards, even if Lucius had rationally known he wouldn't be, not with his financial and political support of the Dark Lord.

"I gave this task to my loyal follower Scout," the Dark Lord continued, waving his hand gracefully towards the bowed Death Eater still standing by the Dark Lord's seat, "and he put all the pieces of my plan into place, assuring me all the while that everything was going without a hitch. And yet, just when I was assured the outcome was inevitable, in stepped Alastor Moody and Edgar Bones." The Dark Lord stopped somewhere to the right and behind Lucius, his voice smooth like silk and promising violence when he spoke again. "You can imagine my displeasure, then, Lucius, when I heard that all our efforts, all our _months_ of planning and preparation, had come to naught."

Lucius swallowed past a dry throat. "Yes, my Lord."

"Naturally, Scout had to shoulder the blame; after all, he was the man to whom I'd entrusted my plan. Luckily for him, he is ever loyal and quite intelligent; he knew just what to bring me to appease my displeasure with him – didn't you, Scout?"

"Yes, my Lord," the Death Eater spoke, voice soft and almost indistinguishable behind his mask, ringing with the disquieting echo of the Voice-changing Charm.

"If you cannot guess what it is that Scout could possibly have brought me to soothe my temper, Lucius, I shall not keep you in suspense – he has brought me the names of those who have impeded our next political step. The name of the traitor in our midst, and the one who held his leash."

Lucius inhaled sharply, mind running through the most likely suspects – and Albus Dumbledore had to be behind it, it could have been no one else, for who else could have the influence within the Auror Office required to direct as law-abiding a Ministry man as Alastor Moody.

"Scout, share with Lucius what you have uncovered."

"Thank you, my Lord. Lucas Tannen works in the Ministry's archives," the Death Eater code-named Scout began. "We asked him to provide us with the structural plans of the Ministry and the Muggle side of Whitehall, and he delivered faithfully. Only he didn't deliver uniquely to _our_ Master, but to his own as well. Tracing his duplicitous actions was not hard once I knew where to look, for his inferior spying techniques betrayed him easily. But he was cunning enough not to get himself caught prior to this day. A shame, really, that he didn't put his cunning in the hands of the right man." The man paused, and behind him, Lucius felt the members of the Dark Lord's innermost circle shift slightly. He wondered if they'd already heard this, if this was a show for his own benefit, or if they were as in the dark as he himself, if they were as enthralled and suspenseful as he felt, waiting for Scout to reveal that it was Dumbledore behind it. "When our Lord called him for interrogation," the man finally continued, "a proper examination of his mind revealed that Tannen's ideology was aligned with that of Albus Dumbledore."

Lucius exhaled, the confirmation a momentary relief, before reason reasserted itself and began clanging in his head those warning bells of something not quite fitting, because how could it _possibly_ be that _the Dark Lord_ hadn't smelled out a Muggle-lover in their midst?

"At this moment you must be wondering, Lucius, how it could be possible for Albus Dumbledore and his filth-loving sycophants to find their way into our circle. How Lord Voldemort himself could have overlooked such a threat," the Dark Lord spoke up, right from behind Lucius, and he barely managed to contain his involuntary jerk of surprise, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end from that hypnotic voice being so close. "It is not; I would never allow a man who does not share in our beliefs in blood purity to join our ranks." He stepped forward until he was back in Lucius' line of sight. "But that still left the matter of this man and his allegiance to be resolved. It didn't take me long to reach the correct conclusion – his mind contained lies. I say 'contained lies', Lucius, because for a Legilimens such as myself, a lying mind is just as easy to spot as a lying tongue. But a mind that contains lies, that is another thing entirely. Only lies that one does not know are lies would sound as truth to Lord Voldemort's skilled mind." He emphasised this with a soft tap of the side of his forefinger to his temple, pulling Lucius' eyes unwillingly to his face, to meet the dark eyes that, deep within Lucius' very core, drove terror the likes of which he'd never experienced before he'd first stood before the Dark Lord. "Therefore, these lies could only have been put there by one far more powerful than the traitor himself. So I sent Scout back, to be my ever-faithful chameleon among enemy's ranks, and to find me the truth of this Lucas Tannen and his _real_ master. Scout, tell Lucius what it was that you found for me."

"Yes, my Lord. I found that on the 20th of February 1975, Orion Black produced in front of the Wizengamot a series of archival documents which supported the existence of a law, applied thrice in the history of our society, to give more power to the Minister of Magic in case of danger to the government. A law that paved the path for the ousting of Eugenia Jenkins and the advent of Harold Minchum, a law that opposed Lord Voldemort's plans for a more malleable Wizengamot and a less effective opposition to his plans. And I also found that Orion Black had not been to the archives himself, nor had any of those who strenuously support him. Indeed, those documents were retrieved by a man who worked at the archives. A man by the name of Lucas Tannen."

And with every word that Scout spoke, from the moment he said Orion Black's name, Lucius could feel himself paling, until he was a chilled statue before the Dark Lord, because _dear mother of Merlin_, it had been _Orion Black_ who'd foiled the Dark Lord's coup, his _pièce de résistance_, his last step to this decade and a half of preparation for his glorious ascension to power over the whole of Wizarding Britain.

_Orion fucking Black_.

The towering fury that exploded in his chest was of a kind he'd never experienced before; it made him itch to Apparate directly into the townhouse on Grimmauld Place and _tear_ _Orion Black limb from limb_, for _daring_ to two-time Lucius' Master, for _daring_ to go behind the Dark Lord's back and align himself with that filthy Muggle-lover _Albus Dumbledore_, over his own _family_.

"So you see, Lucius, I am left with a conundrum. Orion Black is one of the most influential members of the Wizengamot, and one of the most powerful men in our country. Yet he has declared himself my enemy." He paused a moment, then made a small sigh, as if it pained him to have to point out: "Orion Black is also your wife's uncle, and that does raise some grave concerns for me, Lucius."

Lucius dropped to one knee more out of inertia and gravity than free will, his heart hammering in his chest so wildly he thought it'd burst out, no longer with just fury, but sudden terror as well.

"I am ever loyal to you, my Lord, you must know this. Let me deal with that traitor; I'll make him suffer as he's never suffered."

"_Silence!_" the Dark Lord hissed, and his will bore down on Lucius like physical weight, pushing him to his other knee and arms as his mind tried to rebel against his Master's magic at the same time it tried to submit to it, and leaving him panting for breath. "Of course," he continued as if Lucius hadn't dared interrupt him so foolishly just a moment ago, "he is also dear Bellatrix's uncle. And yet, Bella's loyalty to Lord Voldemort cannot be questioned. So perhaps it is unfair of me to question yours, whose connection to Orion Black is more tenuous, when I do not question hers and she grew up in his house."

"My Lord has never been unfair in his beliefs," Lucius rushed to assure him.

"No, I have not. And so I shan't be now, either, Lucius. But you must see that it is also unfair to simply take your word for it, when I did not take dear Bella's. _She_ has had ample chances to prove herself to me on this matter, after all. You have not."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Here is your chance, Lucius. Tell me, what do you think I should do about this matter?"

Lucius ground his teeth one against the other, and when he spoke, it was with the venom of the righteously wronged. "You must teach him the lesson that he should _never _have stood in the path of your vision, my Lord, that his betrayal is unforgivable. In his last moments, he must _know _that his own choices are the reason for his death." Taking a shaky breath, he voiced what that cold, calculating part of him would never have let him forget. "And yet you cannot do it in any way that might turn the tide of the undecided against you."

"And so it is, Lucius," the Dark Lord agreed, smirk tugging on the end of his mouth. "Vengeance, so that our enemies understand our might. And the greater goal, ever before us." Seating himself back onto his chair, the Dark Lord leaned both his elbows on his knees, palms brought together in facsimile of a prayer, resting lightly against his lips as his all-seeing eyes bore into Lucius'. "Of course, Lord Voldemort sees beyond those things. What I want, Lucius, is not simply to remove his power and influence from the board. It is high time that the House of Black stood united with Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters. And you will get that for me."

"My Lord?" Lucius reared in shock, jerking his head down to his knee as soon as he'd caught himself.

"Fret not; this is no punishment, Lucius – it is the chance you've been waiting for all these years, a chance to prove yourself worthy of my trust, in your loyalty and your skills. I have worked it out for you, and our plan relies on two very important things. Do you know what those are, Lucius?"

"I, uh..."

"Come, Lucius, it is rather simple. What is the latest little juicy morsel of information that we have on Orion Black?"

It took Lucius only a moment. "His health is failing."

"Yes. And what will that mean for us?"

"That... he will die in the near future. Or, rather, that there is a way of making everyone believe this to be the case."

"That is more like the Lucius Malfoy I've come to know." The Dark Lord's praise felt like liquid warmth as it spread through Lucius' chest. "Now ask yourself this – how can we use this piece of information to gain his family's power and influence for our cause?"

"Regulus Black," Lucius breathed out in sudden anticipation, finally realising where the Dark Lord was leading him. His mind was already coming up with scenarios on how to best accomplish this task.

"Precisely," the Dark Lord said with satisfied relish. "Rise, Lucius. Rise and accept this task that Lord Voldemort bestows upon you: you will bring me Regulus Black by his seventeenth birthday, and he will be as loyal a follower as his cousin Bellatrix, so that when I stand above Orion Black in his last moments, he will know that not only has he failed in stopping me from achieving my glorious destiny, he has also failed in keeping his heir and his family's fortune from being pledged to my service."

"I will, my Lord," Lucius promised reverently, daring to meet the Dark Lord's eyes, so that his Master may read the sincerity of his words in his mind, as well. "I will get you Regulus Black, and you will have vengeance against Orion Black beyond the traitor's wildest imaginings."

The pleased smile on the Dark Lord's face was going to stay with Lucius for decades to come.

* * *

**Authors' Note**

We hope you enjoyed this side story in five parts, and one last word before its end, for those who are curious about our process.

We decided very early on that we wanted a 50:50 division of writing, so as to practice doing collaborative projects. The content of the story had been imagined primarily by SilenceoftheSolitude, with ideas thrown in by BoxyP as she went along, so we knew what would need to happen, and this led us to the decision of having two characters each showing the DE and the Order side of the story. We also knew that we didn't want to have either Voldemort or Dumbledore as POV characters, given their roles within the wider PNT narrative. It was Silence who suggested Augustus Rookwood as one POV, and BoxyP who came up with Edgar Bones for the Order perspective. Orion Black was a necessary bridge to explain where the information about the coup came from, and then ultimately Aloysius Yap filled in the on-the-ground gaps.

This brought us to the question of dividing narratives between the two of us - Orion was a natural fit for BoxyP, given his presence in PNT and the need for continuity there, and Yap made sense for Silence given that he's the only original POV character and that Silence was the one who'd worked out all the coup details. Augustus and Edgar were a bit of a tossup, but Silence wanted to write the sleek, intelligent spy, and Edgar is likely going to be present in PNT eventually, giving BoxyP precendence on him. Really, this was about as painless a division as it ever could've been, and we both came out of it very happy with our character choices.

Of course, before we embarked on writing our sides to the story, we had to sit down and actually plot the whole thing start to finish, so as to keep the story tight and make it easier to coordinate. We wrote a bullet-point list of scenes and what needed to happen in each, keeping in mind to distribute the four POVs equally, which we largely succeeded in. Part 5 was a closing idea by BoxyP (who is its author, except for Scout/Augustus' dialogue, penned by Silence in keeping with the previous parts), but the suggestion to tie it into Regulus' PNT narrative was Silence's, which in the end really felt necessary so as to establish the role of this story as accessory material to the PNT main narrative. Then it was a matter of writing out the scenes and cross-editing each other until we were both satisfied with the flow of the story. There was no big rewrites by one author of the other's material, and we both really like it that way. Our styles are, we feel, complementary enough to work nicely together, yet unique enough to give the story a distinct flavour in its four POVs.

What we ended up with is a very eye-opening learning experience as to what our writing strenghts and weaknesses are, where we might clash in some ways and prop each other up in others, and that it's ultimately hugely fun to collaborate with someone who gets what you have in mind, who is open to discussion and debate when there's confusion or disagreement, and with whom you can construct something that's greater than the sum of its parts and which was achieved exactly because there was two of you building on one another's concepts and expanding on each other's ideas. We're not sure when or even if we'll do this again, given the RL limitations that we both have and the fact that we both have our own writing projects, original fiction as well as fanfiction, but we've agreed that if the opportunity or the idea present themselves, we would sit down and discuss if it's manageable, because it's been a blast and absolutely an experience to repeat down the line.

* * *

The title of Part 5 comes not from a quote (we felt it appropriate to shake things up, as it's a sort of 'epilogue' to the main story), but from a chess term called  
The Arabian mate:

As per Wikipedia: "In **the Arabian mate**, the knight and the rook team up to trap the opposing king on a corner of the board. The rook sits on a square adjacent to the king both to prevent escape along the diagonal and to deliver checkmate while the knight sits two squares away diagonally from the king to prevent escape on the square next to the king and to protect the rook."

We'll leave it to you guys to decide who is which piece on this chess board that Voldemort and Dumbledore are playing towards.

* * *

As for the title of the whole story, it comes from the poem _Gerontion_ by T.S. Eliot. Specifically, the part of the poem it is taken from deals with History and how History 'guides' life. We decided to include "and issues" in the title because, while out of the context of its stanza it sounded, admittedly, a bit off, it nonetheless made a lot of sense. Here is the stanza in full:

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now  
History has many **cunning passages, contrived corridors  
And issues**, deceives with whispering ambitions,  
Guides us by vanities. Think now  
She gives when our attention is distracted  
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions  
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late  
What's not believed in, or is still believed,  
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon  
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with  
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think  
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices  
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues  
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.  
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree."

This particular passage made sense to us because our story was precisely about cunning, political intricacies and the issues that always arise when History is being made, unforseen turns of events that happen whether or not we want them to. T.S. Eliot was a master of wordcraft and an incredibly knowledgeable poet, who built his poems with the knowledge of all the great men who came before him. And this is why his understanding of History can be so complex and accurate, and why it reflects so clearly a story that is meant to represent a realistic scenario, which was built with inspiration taken from many attempted (and some successful) coups d'etat.


End file.
